Music for Drum Exhibition at Wattis Institute

The Wattis Institute is currently presenting the third and final installment in an exhibition entitled Drum Listens to Heart. Since the end of October, the exhibition has been supplemented with a series of live music performances curated by Diego Villalobos. These have taken place at a variety of other venues, one of which is The Lab. Towards the end of this month, The Lab will host the last of these offerings, which will present two compositions.

The first of these is entitled “American Ledger No. 1,” which was composed by Raven Chacon in 2018. This is a free-form composition, whose score can be displayed as a flag, a wall, a blanket, a billboard, or a door. There is no explicit instrumentation other than the requirement that the music be performed by many players with sustaining and percussive instruments. Those instruments may include coins, axe and wood, a police whistle, and a match. Andy Meyerson will serve as conductor, leading the players through the score.

Photograph of Marshall Trammell by Agatha Urbaniak (courtesy of The Lab)

The second offering will be the latest installment in Marshall Trammell’s Music Research Strategies project. The title of this installment is “Deep Phonology: Technique and Sound Become Visual and Transformative;” and it has been conceived as a community gathering, as well as a live performance. The participants will stage a collective reading of the United Nations’ Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People. The instrumentation will consist of a drum, which serves as a vernacular tool for acoustic study and social change.

This concert will begin at 8 p.m. on Saturday, February 25. Regular readers probably know by now that The Lab is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street, a short walk from the corner of Mission Street. The location is particularly good for those using public transportation, since that corner provides bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel as well as a BART station. [updated 2/23, 10:40 a.m.: Due to the continued cleanup of an oil leak, The Lab is still not safe for visitors.  The new venue for the performance will be CounterPulse at 80 Turk Street; and the performance  will begin at 7:30 p.m., rather than 8 p.m.] Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. General admission tickets are available for $15 and may be purchased online through a Withfriends Web page. Admission will be discounted or free for members. Students can purchase discounted tickets by sending electronic mail to thelabsf@thelab.org.