aeblog

intuitive

I went to a performance of "intuitive music" by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen on Saturday night at Harvard and it totally blew my mind. As I told some friends, it made aven the most experimental Schoenberg seem like Mozart in terms of accessibility, but some of the ideas and sounds and technologies were mind-opening and inspiring in many many ways.

The ensemble from Weimar, Germany consisted of cello, piano, trumpet/flugelhorn and 'live electronics' and have been performing together for 24 years so they know each other pretty well. I have always had a HUGE issue with how live performance of music can incorporate computers/electronics/sequencing etc in a way that it doesn't feel like the real musicians are just playing along with a computer. I have seen and heard many failures to strike a nice balance in this regard, but every once in a while, I'll see a group that is successful, and that is really exciting to me. These guys were probably the most successful of any I have ever seen. Not even for a second did it ever feel like they were playing along with a computer or that there was some pre-determined sequence that they were fitting in with. It always felt like the musicians were in full control and that the microchips and wires in front of the electronics player were no different than the wood and strings in the cellists hands. Quite an accomplishment.

I have been thinking more than normal about this topic recently because I have been working on figuring out how I can perform my music live. I will no doubt rely heavily on computers and other bits of technology, and I have no issue with this, but I have a fear greater than my fear of bivalves that on stage I might come across as 'playing along with' a computer. How freaking LAME!!! But how do I judge myself like I cruelly judge everyone I see? This is hard. I can't be unbiased, clearly, but who can I trust? Do I need to videotape myself and watch it pretending I'm in the audience?