Performance Practice
Year 2023 • Instrumentation open ensemble/practice rooms • Length 12-20 min
Performance Practice fulfills the fantasy of walking through the halls of a music conservatory and hearing a usually chaotic aural space transformed into collaborative composition. It can be performed on any pitched instrument by musicians of any level. The only requirement is a familiarity with the musical alphabet, and basic understanding of rhythmic values.
It can act as an introduction to graphic scores for novice musicians, and since each player is in their own room, is also an ideal piece for advanced players who may shy away from group improvisation. Several of the debut performers were recruited within 15 minutes of downbeat. For some, it was their first ever public performance, and for others, just one of several performances that weekend.
The audience is invited to inhabit the composition. They may stop in one corner and focus on interplay between a one-finger keyboardist and a virtuoso violist, or move in continual circles around the spaces. Each audience members absorbs their own temporal snapshots of the totality.
Eliot Burk (piano); Costas Cangellaras (piano); Enrique Conde (clarinet); Alex Grant (double bass); Max Jaffe (piano); Hae Jun Kim (soprano); Max Levenson (piano); Evan Losoya (piano); Simone Maura (violin); Gen Morigami (piano); Wes Nelson (double bass); Clare Marie Nemanich (piano); Marc Perez (trombone); Alice Sandahl (piano); Issac Sherman (piano); Tyson Thurston (conducting; production; audio/video); Marley Wall (piano); Michal Wróblewski (saxophone)
Commissioned for, and performed at, the 50th Anniversary Weekend of California Institue of the Arts.
Thank you to Volker Straebel & Justin Scheid for advising this project.
Note on video: Filmed on iPhone with binaural microphones. Two performances were captured and superimposed in post.
The score is read from left to right, top to bottom. Approximate clock times and registers for each phrase are found in the left and center columns. Pitch class and rhythmic gestures for each phrase are found in the large rectangles to the right of the clock time.
A conductor cues the first performer, who starts their stopwatch and plays the first gesture. The performer in the nearest practice room(s) starts their stopwatch and first gestures approximately 10 seconds after hearing the first performer. The piece concludes when the last performer has played for approximately 12 minutes.