At least some readers may recall that, at the end of this past June, the Living Music with Nadia Sirota Facebook site presented the world premiere of Danny Clay’s composition in eight parts entitled Music for Hard Times. Creating this work began as a partnership with The Living Earth Show (TLES), the duo of percussionist Andy Meyerson and guitarist Travis Andrews. The three first met two days before the “Shelter in Place” order was officially imposed by the San Francisco Health Officer on March 13. As a result, the project began to grow around what Meyerson called “a fundamental research question: ‘is it possible for us to use the tools of our discipline—classical art music—to make people feel better?’”
In response to that question, Clay created a score described as “a series of composed ‘calming exercises’ used to create every sound in the piece.” The exercises themselves are called “strategies,” meaning that interpreting and performing each exercise involves considerable flexibility and indeterminacy. Music notation appears in some of the strategies, sometimes for recommendation and never in a form that can simply be “played.”
The world premiere performance on Sirota’s Facebook site consisted of audio recordings of TLES performing each of the strategies. In addition, Jon Fischer created an ambient film that provides a “visual context” for each of the eight parts of the score. As a result, there was a “video accompaniment” added to Sirota’s presentation. In conjunction with that presentation, a Music for Hard Times album of the audio was released on Bandcamp.
Nevertheless, this album simply captures a single approach to interpreting Clay’s score. Yesterday provided an opportunity to experience an entirely different approach. Through one of the Artist Partner Programs presented by the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and the University of Maryland (UMD) School of Music, TLES and Clay were able to work with the UMD Wind Orchestra and its conductor Michael Votta to prepare a new interpretation of Music for Hard Times. The result was a new “video document,” which was live streamed last night and is now available for viewing on Vimeo. Once again, the images themselves come from Fisher’s film.
In introducing this program, Votta explained that he had long been interested in presenting a performance organized around improvisation. As a result, he had no trouble “buying into” the strategies that constituted Clay’s score. Listening to the soundtrack of the new video, it seems clear that Votta also had no trouble getting the UMD musicians to “buy into” those strategies as well. As a result, the UMD performance expressed those same calming influences that had emerged from Clay’s initial work with TLES on this project.
The most evident difference was therefore one of sonorities. What was most apparent was that the attentive listener could be easily aware of the individual instruments participating. This was far from a “cloud of dissonance” from which snippets of motif would emerge every now and then. Furthermore, when the original score referred explicitly to Meyerson’s vibraphone and Andrews’ guitar, Votta managed to expand those strategies to accommodate the instruments he was adding to the mix. As a result, the evocation of a healing sense of calm permeated the Maryland performance as effectively as had been realized in the TLES recording.
Apparently, all of Votta’s musicians were “significantly distanced.” As a result, this larger-scale improvisation involved every performer establishing just the right “allocations of space” for listening and playing, respectively. One result is that many of the instrument entries clearly reflect a “response” to the entry of another instrument. Note the adverb in that last sentence, however. One of the factors that makes listening to Votta’s realization of Clay’s strategies so absorbing is that one begins to develop what feels like an intimate relationship with the unique voice of every performer.
There are just as clearly robust qualities in Clay’s score, and it was more that a little comforting to recognize that Votta’s unique approach to that score was as absorbing as the “original premiere” performed by TLES.
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