All is not exactly calm a few
hours before curtain. In the Clark Studio Theater, the Juilliard School's
so-called Black Box (located in New York's Lincoln Center), things might
even be described as a bit frantic. The anxious preparations on this April
evening are for the opening of the third annual Beyond the Machine 2.0,
a program billed as three nights of electronic and interactive music and
dance. Judging from the number of technicians scurrying about and all the
cables snaking across the floor, this is to be no ordinary classical music
concert.
At the moment, the center
of attention is not on stage, but rather behind the concert hall's soundboard
where technical director Gregory Boduch, a student of composition at Juilliard,
is busily coordinating a host of tasks. Before the concert can start, video
footage and taped music must be synced with live instruments; foot switches
must be in good working order; onstage laptops must be up and running and
properly lined up with Boduch's computers; and instruments must be amplified
and balanced in the sound mix. But as turbulent as this all appears, Edward
Bilous-director of the school's Music Technology Center (MTC) and creator
of the newly formed plugged-in string quartet known simply as the Electric
Ensemble @ Juilliard, which will make its debut tonight-seems to have everything
under control.
Until the creation of the
MTC in 1995, technology played no role whatsoever in Juilliard's predominantly
classical curriculum. Now, thanks to the center's increasingly popular
Beyond the Machine series, the MTC is the springboard for an innovative
interdisciplinary program that unites students from the school's music,
dance, and drama departments with faculty, alumni, and guest performers.
"Juilliard is a conservatory
and its function therefore is to conserve," says Bilous. "What we've done
at the Music Technology Center is to create an opportunity for students
to look into the future of music and not just preserve the past. Of course,
we believe that the future of music is going to heavily involve contemporary
electronic and computer technology."
Anything
Goes
According to the concert's
program booklet, the center "Éhas become a second home to many young classical
artists with diverse musical interests." Here anything hi-tech goes, as
long as it involves music. "Electronic music takes on lots of forms now,"
says Bilous, during an interview before the show. "It's not quite the same
as it was way back in the early days when someone would walk onstage and
hit the play button on a tape recorder and the lights would dim and at
the end people would applaud a machine."
Not by a long shot. Things
calm down after the preconcert chaos and the packed house is treated to
some pretty interesting pieces. Among the opening-night performances is
Becca Schack's multimedia work Nairobi Street Children, a mix of recorded
video and audio, and a live cellist.
"It was based on photographs
taken by my friend who lived in Kenya for a year," Schack explains. "She
had made an audio tape of a boy living on the streets of Nairobi and I
sampled those voices and basically composed the sequence on the computer.
It's a completely different process from conventional composing because
when you're sequencing on a computer-using [E Magic's] Logic or [Digidesign's]
Pro Tools or some other sequencing program-there really is no notation."
Later in the evening, dancers
perform choreographer Elisabeth Motley's work inspired by the best-selling
recording Morimur, which put forth musicologist Helga Thoene's theory that
J.S. Bach's Partita in D minor for solo violin is actually an homage to
his deceased wife, based on chorale tunes. The disc made its point by interspersing
violinist Christoph Poppen's performance of the Partita with the Hilliard
Ensemble's singing of the chorales. At this performance, violinist Airi
Yoshioka plays Bach amidst dancers Andrea Miller and Amina Royster, who
trigger the prerecorded chorus by stepping on foot switches at the appropriate
times.
"The basic parameters of sound
are manipulated," says Bilous of the electronically enhanced stringed instruments,
"and whatever you hear can be altered."
In other words, the player
plays, and the sound is picked up in the microphone, sent into some processing
equipment, and then emerges through the speakers. Nowadays there's not
only signal-processing equipment-devices that change the sound through
simple filters-but also computerized versions in which the sound is captured
digitally, fed through various software applications, processed with very
sophisticated programming, and then played back to the audience.
"All of this sounds very heady,
a sort of geek-speak, but it's simpler than that," Bilous adds. "Imagine
a piece of music written for, say, a solo saxophone. There's a passage
being performed that has a high F# in it, and right when the soloist hits
that note the software is programmed to engage a whole series of prerecorded
sounds. It's as if a conductor is waiting for that note to give a downbeat
to the orchestra."
Nest
of Vipers
Of course, electronic processing
of music is nothing new-it's been going on in the rock world for decades.
Guitars fed through special effects that delay a signal, cause distortion,
or create swirling chorus effects, and even electronically generated feedback,
are all innovative techniques dating back to '60s rock-guitar pioneer Jimi
Hendrix. But applying these alterations to cellos and violas is a much
newer idea.
Composer, inventor, and performer
Mark Wood, who studied at Juilliard long before technology became a focus
there, has found a unique way to adapt rock electronics to stringed instruments:
He designs and builds his own instruments. Several of his electrified Viper
models had their Juilliard debut in April when the Electric Ensemble @
Juilliard used Wood's quartet to perform his original composition "Nest
of Vipers."
Growing up as a violist in
a musical family-Wood and his three brothers formed a string quartet of
their own-he got to know all the classics. "After playing concerts of Mozart
string quartets," he says, "I was coming home and putting Black Sabbath,
Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles on the stereo. That was the music I could
really relate to. Classical music is certainly more cultivated, but those
groups were more of my time."
It's a sentiment to which
many Juilliard students can relate. "The sense I am gathering from my students,
and one of the reasons that Beyond the Machine is so successful and exciting,"
says Bilous, "is that these kids want to play music that has a direct connection
to the world that they live in."
The instruments Wood built
for the Electric Ensemble resemble their acoustic counterparts, but also
sport some serious differences. For one thing, these instruments are strictly
electric-they cannot be played without being plugged in-and each features
an innovative harness that creates far less strain on the player. Even
the cello is strapped to the body rather than resting on an endpin anchored
to the floor. Clarice Jensen of the Electric Ensemble found this to be
"Éboth liberating and odd. It does make for a lot more freedom as far as
feeling the beat-I am able to move around more, instead of rocking back
and forth in my chair. Also, bowing techniques are quite different: You
barely have to touch the string and it sounds. So every move you make is
much smaller."
Each Viper player also has
a pedal board, much like the setup used by rock guitarists. "With the pedals,"
says Electric Ensemble violist Nadia Sirota, "the possibilities are endless.
More rehearsal time was spent on orchestration-color changes that could
be done manually through the pedal boards rather than thinking about making
small changes physically on our instrument."
She adds, smiling, "We're
not used to being conscious of our feet when we play."
Says Wood, "It's truly exciting
for me to work with these young artists because most of them didn't even
know what a wah-wah pedal is.
So when they got into it,
it was a whole new world. Guitar players have known about this [approach]
for a long time; string players are a bit behind."
Say
You Want an Evolution
In a way, this kind of forward
thinking has always been a big part of the so-called classical tradition.
"What I continually have to point out to my colleagues," says Bilous, "is
that every single instrument we play represents some technological advancement
over its predecessor. The acoustic instruments we have now really are a
result of composers putting demands on the makers for instruments that
make new sounds and have greater flexibility and greater expressive qualities.
And they continue to make those demands, except that now the demands are
made to software manufacturers and makers of electronic instruments.
"So this really is in keeping
with a very old tradition."
Or in the words of Mark Wood,
"It's called evolution."
Ultimately, both Wood
and Bilous are aiming for relevance. "One of the interesting challenges
for this kind of medium," says Bilous, "is that there are no 'classics'
written for these instruments, no standard repertoire.
"None of this represents
a disputation of or threat to the tradition," he adds. "Juilliard's
central mission will always be to train students in playing the
masterworks of classical music. The Electric Ensemble offers an
opportunity for students to spread their wings, to broaden their
perspectives and try some new things."
And, Bilous adds, there has
been very little resistance to that trend in the typically staid conservatory
climate. "Most people realize, as in every other walk of life and in every
other industry, computers are playing an increasingly large role in the
way we run our lives," he says. "And that's certainly true of music."
Ultimately, it is the allure
of hipness-of Deep Elvis-and the societally coveted position of
"rock star" that draws participants to these alternative sounds.
"I am sure that every Juilliard music student-and even some of the
faculty members-wish on some level that the energy that exists on
any good rock record was available to them in classical music,"
says Bilous. "One of the most important things about our Electric
Ensemble is that it gives students an opportunity to play music
that is dangerous."
