aeblog

to gimmick or not to gimmick

I went to the final BMOP concert of the season last Friday. It was a Takemitsu tribute and included pieces by the man himself as well as ones influenced by him. The latter were a premiere from a local Boston composer, Ken Ueno, and Tan Dun's Water Concerto. As always, the concert was very well done and I enjoyed each of the pieces for different reasons, but the Water Concerto in particular got me to thinking.
I found the piece fascinating throughout, but let me explain a bit first. What on earth is a water concerto anyway? I wondered the same thing until I entered the hall and saw some of the equipment that was setup. I guess I should call them instruments, though they resembled equipment more in their non-traditionality. There were huge glass bowls of water lighted from underneath, long tubular devices, various gongs, wooden bowls, and a slew of un-nameable objects that proved to all make some sort of weird sound when hit or dunked. The coolest thing was that there were plastic tarps covering all the standard recording equipment. This does not happen often at a classical music performance. So this water concerto was exactly what it sounds like: a concerto for water. Truthfully, it is a concerto for percussion, which, in this case, consisted exclusively of percussion that involved water in one way or another. I think that percussion is somehow the default instrument classification for anything really weird - just make the percussionist play it!
I ended up liking the piece because of it's rhythmic inventiveness and for the amazing variety of sounds that were conjured up by Robert Schulz, the solo percussionist.
But what really got me thinking was that in certain ways, the piece was a total gimmick. I mean, how silly is it to write a full-on 30 minute piece of music for some dude splashing water all over the place and generally flailing around like a kid during his first swim of the season? So yes, this was a gimmick, and usually gimmicks annoy me because usually they do not have any depth to keep one's interest past the initial WOW factor. But this piece was different for me. I think I would have liked it even if traditional instruments were substituted for the water. In some ways, I had to get past the splashing to enjoy it. Tan Dun composed a lovely piece of music and it was performed well.
I often think that I have a music gimmick too. And it worries me sometimes. I'm the weirdo who sets up this crazy plywood booth and convinces people to go inside it and record themselves speaking and then turns the results into 'music'. This is a gimmick, for sure. But for me, it's all about the end result, not the process. I do enjoy the process tremendously, but if the music sucked and I wasn't proud of it, who the hell cares how I got there? I guess my point is that gimmicks aren't inherently good or bad. Sometimes they can attract positive attention to lots of solid creativity that might otherwise go unnoticed, and other times they can distract listeners from an unfortunate lack of creativity. There's nothing wrong with the former. Enough defending me and Mr. Dun.

Well, I've been on a boat for the past three days, and now I'm stuck in a parking lot highway due to some fugitive shootout that occurred half a mile ahead of me in southern Maine. It sucks to be stuck for hours, but it would be much worse to have been involved, so I am thankful.