Contrails (musical performance)

Abstract

What I propose is to open up the potential of digital site, space, and place by having three musicians in widely different geographical locations perform a new composition of music in a real-time performance that would be presented ‘live’ in the conference space (and possibly also streamed on the web at the same time). The working title for the piece is ‘Contrails’ for clarinet, percussion, and computer. I have managed to interest Dr. Greg Haynes (percussionist) at Colorado State University in Gunnison and Dr. Jeremy Wohletz (clarinetist) at Dickinson State University in North Dakota to collaborate with me on this project. I chose both of them because they are truly world-class musicians who happen to also be working at ‘sites’ and ‘spaces’ that are remote and isolated in a way that precludes traditional options for musical collaboration. Because of the inaccessibility of these places the three of us would need to do the entire project using digital collaboration techniques.

The Concert Hall is a place/space of special significance in creating a musical experience for several hundred years now. Traditionally musical performance has been primarily limited to ‘sites of distinct academic practice’ that were designed (or appropriated) for the purpose of providing a defined space for a musical experience to take place – musicians and audience in a single encompassing space. I would argue that the development of recording, broadcasting, and now digital delivery technologies during the 20th century and beyond have transformed this role of place, space, and site in profound ways, opening almost anyplace where you can listen to your phone with earbuds into a site that can accommodate a potentially deep musical experience that can be separated from the performance of the music in time through recording, in space through broadcast or internet delivery, or both.

For technical reasons the musical experience has, until recently, been limited by the notion that the musicians themselves must actually perform at a site whose space accommodates them. Modern recording practices, particularly in Popular music genres, often negate this – e.g. very few of the musicians on M. Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ were ever in a room together at the same time. But, for the most part, the accepted norm is that the musicians must perform together to generate a meaningful musical experience. Current advances in internet technologies are beginning to change this opening the possibilities for extra-site collaboration in interesting ways.

Electronic music and its proponents have a long history of challenging this notion of place, space, and site – bringing ‘living’ musical experiences to people in non-traditional performance venues using non-traditional means of creating music. I look forward to contributing to this tradition in some small way.