2017 - ONGOING: An ongoing exploration of connecting process, image, sound and performance.
In 2017 I was invited to participate in the inaugural season of The Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg. Founded by William Kentridge the Centre aims to find the less good idea by creating and supporting experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects.
I set out to compose scores for an ensemble of traditional and unusual instrumentation. Reflecting on my process of composing music and my practice in general, I felt I didnʼt want to write melodies on paper and hand them to competent musicians. I wanted to rather curate an ensemble of people who would form a complex mass of personalities, tensions, sonic potential and humour. I wanted to write process.
I started to devise process-based experiments to compose images that could be transposed into musical language. The resulting scores ultimately took the form of videos with a hidden layer of instructions to musicians on how to “read” each score. The video acted as conductor, indicating how and when to start and stop playing, seldom prescribing actual notes. The score would not change with each performance, but the resulting music would change, as an unfolding movement, a collaboration of many parts that make up one mass. I think of this as writing dynamic structures with clear guidelines to movement, tone and relationships, leaving space for (in fact encouraging) individual voice, personality and group dynamic to colour the overall resulting music. Realising that performance is central to both the writing process and the outcome, I began to think of these scores as performance scores.
The first iteration of the performed scores took the form of The Blind Mass Orchestra, an ensemble of 10 Johannesburg based musicians, performing on traditional, non-traditional and invented instruments. The programme included two scores with visual material by William Kentridge resulting from instructions given to him in relation to the experiments.
João Renato Orecchia Zúñiga (Chole Kulcha Harp, analogue synthesizer, electronics), Thandi Ntuli (piano), Tlale Makhene (percussion, voice), Ann Masina (voice), Tsepo Pooe (cello), Waldo Alexander (electric violin), Mpumelelo Mcata (electric guitar), Tshepang Ramoba (electronic drums), Dan Selsick (trombone, EWI electronic wind instrument), Janus Fouché (theremin, artificial intelligence programming) artist | William Kentridge (additional drawings and instructions to the orchestra)
Looking for ways to decode my process of working with image as performance score, leading to video as conductor, I began to look for ways of charting these sonic movements and translations onto paper. This lead me to begin drawing, after a two-decade pause.
While on residency in the town of Richmond, set in the expansive Karoo region of South Africa, I experimented with the deconstruction of a static image - an abstract landscape drawing by visual artist Liza Grobler - into individual parts and sections with the aim of producing and performing a score based on the original image. I wanted perform the score intuitively, then retrospectively decode the process in order to reconstruct a new image representing that process. The resulting image (pictured below) became a new score, shown at Circa Cape Town and has been performed several times by different ensembles.
The next iteration came during The Centre for the Less Good Idea's third season in 2018, curated by Lindiwe Matshikiza, Bettina Malcomess and Bhavisha Panchia.
I experimented with transposing or mapping elements of scores onto different types of movement, including human body, self playing drum kit and modular synthesiser. Events on a timeline were transformed into control voltages and pulses, with randomness inserted.
Performers include Mele Broomes, Lindiwe Matshikiza, Nathaniel Sheppard III, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Chad Cordeiro, Naty Kaly, Temandrota, Andrei van Wyk, Gretchen Blegen, modular synthesizer and automated drum kit.
The reintroduction of drawing into my practice led me to explore printmaking with David Krut Workshop and master printer Jillian Ross. The body of prints was accompanied by static and interactive sound installations, videos and performances, as well as a limited vinyl record with hand silkscreened cover and 12 page booklet (30 copies).
The resulting images are then reiterated as new performance scores, ultimately feeding back into the score itself and revealing new potential for further iterations. The music that is performed is then not the entire work, but a moment along a longer trajectory of a composition. The composition as a whole is an ongoing conversation between image, performance, sound, histories, language and bodies.
The video below shows the etchings from the exhibition arranged in a long line to act as a new score, accompanied by the recording of a performance of that score at the closing of the exhibition.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR PLAYING A SINGLE NOTE
Invited to create an "11-minute Epic" for the Centre for the Less Good Idea's fifth season in 2019, I wrote a series of instructions for performers to hold a single note for the duration of the piece. Again the focus is on each individual's response to instructions on how to sing or play their note in a given moment.
PERFORMED BY | Bongile Lecoge-Zulu (flute) | Ray Mupfumira (voice) | Collen Tom (snare drum) | Princess Tshabangu (voice) | Netsayi (voice) | Waldo Alexander (violin)
THE HOLLAND FESTIVAL, AMSTERDAM 2019
A new formation of the Blind Mass Orchestra performed at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam in June 2019, including four South African musicians and four Dutch musicians.
João Renato Orecchia Zúñiga - modular synthesizer, Shane Cooper - contrabass, Diamanda Dramm - violin, Morris Kliphuis - french horn, Wiek Hijmans - guitar, Tlale Makhene - percussion, Ann Masina - voice, Rogier Smal - drums.
