thirteen ways

8bb arrived in Richmond VA over the weekend, in advance of the world premiere of The Only Moving Thing. The next three days will be a busy, stress-filled hell, but I will still try to post short “miscellanies” with photos from rehearsals.

Over the past two weeks we have essentially been hibernating in our Chicago rehearsal studio for the last two weeks, in frantic final preparations for the project. Below are some rehearsal notes:

Firstly, there was the “to monitor or not to monitor” question. We will perform Steve Reich’s Double Sextet with a pre-recorded, 8bb-played CD. It is essential that we clearly hear the recording, but in-ear monitors can ruin a sense of live performance, isolating us in a way that can drain the energy from a performance. The quartet (flute, clarinet, violin, cello) felt that was unnecessary, so opted for two speakers, while the “engine” driving the piece ended up with in-ear (piano) and over-ear (percussion) headphones.

The “Sextet 2″ CD consists of a stereo track, with one “ear” heavily weighted towards quartet, and the other highlighting piano and percussion. We split this signal so the quartet heard mostly quartet-sound through the speakers, while piano and percussion could hear themselves. Balancing the elements took hours of rehearsal time; patience will be required in every venue, as even minute adjustments can mean the difference between a switched-on performance and a studio run-through.

We recorded several dry runs of Double Sextet to send to Steve Reich, each time trying to put his comments into practice. Comments mostly dealt with issues of balance (”more strings!”) and expression (”get rid of accents in that section”; “not so much separation”), but Steve also compared us to Metallica in one email, not entirely positively. Rock stars!

singing in the dead of night: Michael Gordon’s unhinged, virtuoso extravaganza needed mock-performances to ensure fluid, natural movement, which hopefully will bring out the comedy of the piece more easily; we had spent many hours on the choreography (or “chore-eography”, according to Susan Marshall) of Julie Wolfe’s piece, so much more time was devoted to music rehearsal (lots of metronome work, especially on the difficult canon near the work’s final climactic outburst); David Lang’s three short works were in danger of getting stale from over-rehearsal, so we let them out into the backyard to give them some air and a chance to wee.

Our preparation culminated in a full run of the show in our studio on Friday - minus lighting, costumes, sound and pizzazz - for a few friends. Many comments after the performance dealt with “intention”: viewers felt that the intensity of our movements was not enough to convey meaning to an audience, especially not to the paupers in the nose-bleeds. One person felt that our natural communication while playing hadn’t transferred to non-musical or non-playing actions. Several guests were moved, several confused, several very impressed. A perfect 8bb split!