Expression Through Music Describes ‘Global Soundings’
“Global Soundings” is not for the artistic faint of heart. Not for you if you prefer predictable experiences, if you need a tune to hum, a beat you can tap your feet to.
But if there’s a curious, inquisitive bone in your body, you should be there.
The six international artists who will present “Global Soundings” at the Interplayers Theater Tuesday night try to find new ways to express themselves though music.
Their tools include homemade instruments which range from very simple to very sophisticated, distinctive compositional techniques, video and even made-up language. Some of the performers are pure musicians; some are performance artists who use music.
Their ultimate goal, they say, is to explore the way human brains perceive sound. How they get there varies widely.
Jaap Blonk, a Dutch performer “comes from a mathematical background but would consider himself to be a musician/poet,” said Dan Senn, the Tacoma artist who organized the event.
“He does sound poetry that is very often meaningless in the same way that music can be meaningless.”
German musician Johanness Schmidt-Sistermans “has a music background,” Senn said, “but he’s trained in the theater arts; his performance borders on performance art.”
The mononymous Trimpin is “an internationally renowned sonic explorer and inventor of automated instruments” whose portion of the show “features a grand piano with the lid removed (and) replaced by a complicated device resembling a large mechanical insect,” reads a description of the show.
“Included are robot hands holding guitar picks, dampers, tubes, motors, gears, chain drives and solenoids of enormous complexity.”
A box containing 88 mechanical plungers poises above the keyboard.
“Together, these components create ‘Contraption IPP (for Instant Prepared Piano) 71512,’ which is designed to perform, according to instructions from the computer element, feats of dazzling complexity which no human could possibly achieve.”
Some of the performers are lesstechnologically inclined. James Staley, long a standby of the New York art-music scene with his Roulette Intermedium, is a trombonist and composer. Dan Senn has doctorates in music composition and ceramic sculpture and uses video and music made with discarded utensils.
Jaap Blonk’s fantasy languages and vocal sounds will long stick with anyone who hears them. He recently was featured in an interview on National Public Radio.
The six performers are in the country to perform at a six-part workshop called “Sound, Art and the International Connection,” which Senn has organized in Tacoma.
But unlike those performances, each of which will feature the work of a single artist, Tuesday’s show promises to be a collaboration, although Senn himself isn’t sure yet how the show is going to work.
“We’re going to make it up when we get there. At its very worst - if we just set up our things and do one performance after the other - it will be great. But we all have a background in improvisation and I’m sure something special will come out of it.”
“Global Soundings” is presented in Spokane by the Contemporary Art Alliance, a local non-profit group that aims to bring “diverse contemporary art presentations” to Eastern Washington.
xxxx Location and time: Interplayers Theater, 174 S. Howard, Tuesday, at 7 p.m. Tickets: $7 at the door