I’m not very well versed in the realm of more contemporary and modern music, so attending concerts like REConnected and Light and Perspective, which I attended in January, is always an interesting experience. Once again, I did not know what to expect when walking into the venue. I was surprised when I saw the array of instruments set up on stage. They ranged from drums, flower pots, a stuffed animal monkey, and a banana shaker.
A total of four pieces were performed during this particular Wednesday noon-hour concert, and they were performed by Daniel Tones on percussion and by Owen Underhill on piano. The program was made up of To the Earth by Frederic Rzewski (b.1938), A/Symmetry Ritual by Owen Underhill (b.1954), Invisible Cities by Linda Catlin Smith (b.1957), and Temazcal by Javier Alvarez (b.1956).
As Professor Konoval mentioned in class, one of the central ideas of contemporary art is confusion or being a state where you don’t really know what is going on. For the entirety of the concert, this is how I felt. There were moments where I didn’t know how to make sense of what was happening on stage, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to react. During the piece that utilized the monkey and banana shaker, I was unsure if I was supposed to join in with the laughter of the audience or remain serious, as the musicians looked extremely stern while shaking their objects up and down.
The first piece entitled To the Earth (1985) by Frederic Rzewski (b.1938) was played on a group of four instruments lines up on a table. They appeared to be clay flower pots each of varying size, and were played by a long stick that looked like a chopstick. It was very interesting to see the various ways in which the musician was able to produce so many different sounds with a single type of object depending on how it was struck.
There was also an oral component to the first peace, as Tones recited poetry along with the percussion. Majority of the performance was syllabic, meaning that each note played on the pots came with a single syllable of poetry. This created an interesting yet irregular rhythm, with no clearly defined meter.
The piece that featured the stuffed monkey and banana shaker consisted of a number of instruments. The musicians started at the back of the stage on different instruments, and eventually moved up the stage to play different instruments scattered across the stage, Each portion of this peace contrasted the sound of two different instruments at one time. This reminded me of the central idea of the concerto, as it was meant to highlight the combination of different instruments and their juxtapose their sounds.
This concert really challenged my understanding of instruments, as I have learned that there are no limitations to what can be used to produce sound. We typically think of traditional instruments as the only type of instruments, but in reality, any object used creatively can be used to create a melody line or rhythm.