The American Composers Orchestra has embraced the role of multimedia in its “Orchestra Underground” series, which began in 2004, and in “Playing It Unsafe,” initiated in 2008. Making multimedia effective, says ACO Executive Director Michael Geller, is “all about delivering the exact experience that the user wants at the exact moment. I think we would be unwise to ignore that big societal trend. The question for an orchestra is, ‘What do you do with that trend, about people wanting to absorb experiences in that way?’ ” The ACO’s answers to this have been intriguing. Performances are often experimental, such as Charles Mason’s 2008 work Additions—for which electronics and digital sound were used in the lobby and restrooms, as well as the auditorium— and Jason Freeman’s Glimmer: Concerto for Chamber Orchestra and Audience, a work dating from 2004. At the ACO premiere of Glimmer, audience members wielded different colored light sticks; information from the sticks was recorded by live video cameras and transmitted to colored lights on the music stands, and the players would then perform the music as influenced by those directions. Such works do not merely coax the audience to engage. They demand active participation. But the ACO seems wary of misusing multimedia. “The more media you use, the more chance there is for the audience to be either doubly engaged or doubly distracted,” says ACO Creative Advisor Derek Bermel. “If somebody says that they want to use video but they don’t have a real reason for using video, a red flag might go up.” For americanorchestras.org
composer’s brother, the writer, director, and actor Colin Gee. The work places Erin Gee’s signature Mouthpiece style—wordless, non-semantic vocals in which various hums, blips, whistles, and syllables are rendered ethereal yet somehow visceral—within a narrative framework. The storyline is a fictional take on the medieval Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci and his use of the Memory Palace technique, which he developed to access his memories and effectively function in fourteenth-century China. The vocals are supplemented with video and live acting by Colin Gee, whose minute fragments of physical movement mirror the musical ges-
Using narration, dramatic readings, and projected visuals, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Beyond the Score series has provided in-depth explorations of masterworks by such composers as Bartók (top) and Shostakovich.
Todd Rosenberg
New Sights and Sounds
the ACO, the motivation for utilizing multimedia comes not from a desire to break ties with the great orchestral repertoire, but instead to continue in its tradition of innovation. “When the great composers— Mozart, Brahms—wrote their orchestral music, they were on the cutting edge,” says Bermel. “But sometimes it’s hard to listen to their music with the same spirit today. What the ACO is hoping to do is keep that cutting edge alive.” One of the orchestra’s latest performances was the November 30, 2009 premiere of Erin Gee’s Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part I, a collaborative effort with the
Todd Rosenberg
of the NAACP, it was co-commissioned by the Akron Symphony Orchestra and the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, and premiered by the latter in November 2008. Westwater acknowledges that his approach has not always been welcomed by orchestras. “I do run into the attitude from time to time that music is everything,” he says, “that anything else done during a performance is in some way a distraction or inhibits the audience’s ability to experience music as it should be experienced. Although there is a place for that attitude, I think it has unfortunately stifled the ability of orchestras to reach today’s audience and tomorrow’s audience.”
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