Last night Paul Dresher and Steven Schick returned to Z Space for the first in another round of four performances of Schick Machine. The composition is as much an innovative score by Dresher as it is an imaginative approach to theater, directed by Rinde Eckert, who also provided the script. Schick thus faces a dual challenge of pursuing Eckert’s narrative while rising to the challenges of Dresher’s composition, performing on a stage filled with elaborate (and occasionally intimidating) invented instruments created by both Dresher and Daniel Schmidt.
In Eckert’s script Schick takes the role of Lazlo Klangfarben. Those who know their history of twentieth century music are probably aware of the idea of a Klangfarbenmelodie (a German word that translates as “sound-color melody”). In his early years (prior to pursuing his twelve-tone technique), Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern created compositions that Schoenberg called “timbre structure,” adding a new approach to complement polyphonic thematic lines and chord progressions. Thus, through his assumed name, Schick executes a “sound-color composition” in which the palette of colors is provided by a diversity of percussion instruments, many of which were created explicitly for this performance.
Eckert was reading the stories in the Labyrinths anthology of short stories and essays by Jorge Luis Borges. In Borges’ labyrinthine spirit, Eckert created the Klangfarben character or, as he put it in his program note, “Steve Schick as a man unable to remember Steve Schick who has named himself Lazlo Klangfarben, but still has all of Steve Schick’s memories.” This provides the foundation for what can loosely be called a plot:
Klangfarben, as opposed to Steve Schick, is an inventor. His latest brainchild is something he calls the Schick Machine, named after a percussionist he dimly recalls.
Steven Schick holding his hoop in front of the multi-key Peacock (photograph by Chi Wang, courtesy of the Paul Dresher Ensemble)
So it is that Schick-the-performer negotiates his way around a stage that is packed to the gills with invented instruments (many of which are ordinary objects, such as a hoop, that can be put to use as a musical instrument). As Schick perambulates from one sound-source to another, we come to recognize that every sound he makes evokes some aspect of his personality traits. In this respect we can view his script as an act of “talking back” to Borges.
Those familiar with Borges probably recognize the dispassionate quality of his rhetoric. It is almost as if he had decided to write as a journalist to document fictional characters and events. Schick-the-performer, on the other hand, is far from dispassionate. As we follow his journey through that stage filled with sonorous objects, we realize that even the slightest sound is sufficient to trigger an intense emotional reaction. One might say that Schick-the-performer is complemented by Schick-the-actor, where the latter evokes profound emotional reactions to every sound created by the former. One might also say that all the instrument-objects on the stage constitute a labyrinth in the Borges spirit, but Schick is anything but dispassionate in his performance of both a percussionist and an acutely sensitive listener.
Lest some readers may feel that the performance, as a whole, is a “deep dive” that might be approached reluctantly, it is important to observe that there is a crystalline clarity to the relationship between the actions we see and the sounds we hear. We may be puzzled by the character traits of Schick-Klangfarben, but there is nothing puzzling about the rich diversity of auditory experiences. Given the current time of the year for these performances, the essay by John Cage entitled “Happy New Ears” comes to mind. My own ears were more than happy with each of Schick’s encounters with a “sound object;” and I can think of no better attitude for greeting the New Year.
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