The Oral Composition performance was such an interesting concept, because it was done for a class with 10 students and they each had to compose a piece and teach the rest of the class how to play it orally. The professor briefly explained that they spent the first few weeks of the term learning about rhythms and beats and how to construct a piece, and then they began composing, and then finally getting to teach it to the rest of the class. They performed each of the 10 pieces and we got to see how each student’s composition was unique from the rest. The concept of this course sounds so challenging, yet very creative and fun and I can only imagine how difficult it was to not only compose a 3 minute piece with 10 different percussion parts but to then teach it orally to the class, and then memorise each piece to perform in front of an audience. Just thinking about doing all of that sounds daunting, so I applaud them all for putting on such a great performance.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself during this performance, and my mood was only boosted by the fact that they played outside with the beautiful weather with the blooming cherry blossom trees in the background. The musicians all sat in a circle, took their shoes off, and got comfortable and it was evident that they were all having a great time playing with each other. They were all smiling and making eye contact to connect with each other and to stay on time and overall it was just great vibes. It was also really nice to see what some of the UBC music students work on during the term because I’ve never really been exposed to what they do in the music department.
There were some really complicated and intricate pieces composed for this performance, and I can see how necessary their seating arrangement was to execute some of the parts because they really had to look at each other and see what they were doing in order to stay together. I was also interested in the instruments they used, as I haven’t seen many of them before, but there were some I recognised like a gong or cymbals, but there were also some small metal drum-like instruments that almost looked like a baking tin. What I have enjoyed so far about some of these performances is that I have been exposed to a lot of new instruments, which has been a nice change to what I’m used to. As someone who has more experience playing music with melodies, seeing two percussion performances has been really new and different for me because the music is created solely from rhythm and beat in combination with the different sounds each percussion instrument makes. It’s a completely different experience because instead of having an idea of where the piece may go melodically, I can follow along with just a specific rhythmic pattern or be completely surprised with something that disrupts the pattern.