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T H E A T R E A N D O T H E R P E R F O R M A N C E |
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Sulla Strada (On The Road), 1982
MUSIC THEATRE, after Jack Kerouac. Stage production by M. Criminali, Venice, May 1982. Winner of the 1982 Ubu Award for best musical score for a theatrical work.
Zangezi, 1986-87
The performance was originally the idea of the late Peter Schmidt who had previously translated the complete works of Khlebnikov (who died of malnutrition in 1922 at the age of 37). Subtitled "A Supersaga in 20 Planes," the poem required Mr. Schmidt to convey into English scenes written to simulate the languages of birds, of gods, and of what the poet called "beyonsense." Plane 1 calls for several characteristic Russian birds—which in various transpositions and multiplications become a major motif in the soundscore. Plane 2, "The Gods", adds sampled Pygmy voices. A strange and interesting example of the organic relationship between "music" and "nature" was revealed: a sampled Oriole played two octaves lower sounds extraordinarily similar to a Pygmy voice singing one of their characteristic melodic leap patterns while an actual Pygmy speaking voice played up two octaves sounds very much like a birdcall.
Lurch, 1996
Choreography: Gideon Obarzanek Music: New composition by Jon Hassell in collaboration with DJ JAD McAdam and DJ BLK Lion. Live on stage — DJ JAD, DJ BLK Lion with pre-recorded tracks from Mo'Wax, Warp and others. Decor & Lighting design: Andrew Carter Costumes: Brett Chamberlain Running Time: 73 minutes Jon Hassell music duration 61:05
1 Girl's Dance 5:30 2 Boy's Dance 4:40 (These 2 are on the "souvenir CD-Program". 5000 copies published.) 3 Duet 5:10 4 Group-Isolation+Duet 6:45 (These 2 DJ music selections are subtracted from JH music duration) 5 Projection: Blue Night 6 Empire Girls 7 Lightman 8 Theory of Dreams 9 Screenman and Go-Go Girl 10 Spirit of the Times 11 Rain Dream 12 Balloon Dance 13 Balloon Pickers Solo 14 Ballroom Jungle
There were twelve performances of Lurch between 12-28 Sept 96 Lucent Danstheater, Den Haag Netherlands. Additional performances in Strasbourg Oct 96. New material was created in July 1996 in Los Angeles along with the combined talent of DJ BLK Lion, DJ JAD, Jamie Muhoberac and Pete Scaturro with Kubi Uner engineering. Elements from pre-formed tracks created from 1980 to 1994 with a cast of musicians too numerous to list here with the exception of producers Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, and Pete Scaturro. A performance of Solid State, 1997
ONE OF the early Hassell minimalist synth works given a new and expanded performance at the Amsterdam Planetarium in February, 1997. Michel Redolfi, director, Centre International de Recherche Musical (CIRM), Nice, wrote to Jon Hassell:
Solid State notes:
Solid State is usually described as an "invisible sonic sculpture" which takes place in time. The avoidance of the word "musical" in its initial description is meant to provoke a fresh approach to the event and to the experience of listening, beyond the conventional expectations set up by the notion of a "concert". In spite of its creation almost thirty years ago, it sounds as if it could be an ambitious piece of today's "electronica" movement—something designed to throb viscerally from the giant loudspeakers of a dance club. Around the world—in Contemporary Art Museums in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Nice, the Planetarium in Amsterdam, with Merce Cunningham Dance in New York, Solid State has unfailingly registered with audiences around the world as a powerful psychological/spiritual experience. Classical sculpture began with all its material "given"—a block of stone becomes a form by subtracting that which is already there. With Solid State, holes are "carved" (filtered) out of a block of sound, rhythmically unfolding in time. The rhythm patterns "morph" dynamically and spatially from one to another: for example a pattern of "strong-strong-weak" gradually morphs to "strong-weak-strong" without your being aware of the exact moment of change. (Like the positive/negative space of gestalt diagrams where one form appears as another disappears, demonstrating the impossibility of holding both images in perception simultaneously.) This brings up the idea of Solid State as an "audialization" (cf. "visualization") of a complex visual concept—like a computer simulation of a storm which is "performed" sonically instead of visually. But, more importantly, the Solid State experience is one of poetry and perception. In earlier performances an extraordinary relationship was discovered to a passage from Carlos Castaneda's A Separate Reality (written two years after Solid State was created):
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A SECOND collaboration with director Peter Sellars, after Shadow Work about which there seems to be little available information. Zangezi is a play by the Russian futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov and was a co-production of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 'Next Wave Festival' and the Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art. Newsweek 's critic Alan Rich wrote that Hassell's score "throbs with a visionary poetry of its own".
Jon Hassell: The music for Lurch began with a concept hinted at by the phrase, "a Fourth World Retrospective in DJ Form". A key phrase here is "DJ Form" — as if this actually implied a form of music rather than referring to a person who plays pre-recorded music. And, in fact, the DJ has become a maker of form not only through selection but also through techniques of sound capture and speed and pitch changes. "Retrospective" refers to the idea I've had for a long while now to deconstruct pre-formed music of mine in order to reconstruct it into something new by altering and mixing the individual musical components of any number of tracks in the same way that a DJ alters and combines entire tracks. These component "parts" — some previously used, some new — have been divided between DJ BLK Lion and DJ JAD who have various degrees of free improvisation space within which to create and adapt to the mood and pace of a given performance.