But here we are. Michael Feldman, who directed the film, and I got to work on submitting our film to festivals, and on February 17th I’m headed off to the New Jersey Film Festival to screen our work. If you’re around, come and join us!

We’re second on the program, too, so if you have a problem with Film Festivals in general (an allergy to thick plastic-rim glasses and black turtlenecks?) you can duck out early. Here’s the YouTube embed in case you want to see exactly what we’re screening in New Brunswick, but in HD:

We had one hell of a day, starting with loading in and lunch, through last minute rehearsal, tech and soundcheck, forgetting to eat dinner (and then getting fed dinner by OCCUPY WALL STREET who were cooking on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOR FROM US!), through a little over three hours of fantastic music, monologues, spoken word, improvisation, live audio replacement for YouTube videos, triumphant, raucous applause, and then cleaning up and loading out – we were out of by building by 1 AM. For a few of us that was a 15 hour day, and I’ve never loved my job more.

Exapno was PACKED! We got out extra chairs, and filled those, and had people standing behind that. It was incredible.

Stay tuned for YouTube uploads

As promised, we’ll put as much of the show on YouTube as copyright allows. We’ve got to clean up the audio and edit the video a little, but we’ll be getting these videos out to you hopefully at a rate of around one per week.

And oh yeah – if you have photos or videos of the event from your telephone (I know some of you do!) please post ‘em in comments or email me – we’ll get a Flickr gallery together or something to go with the youtube videos.

To all of you in the audience who came up to me as we were packing up to say “please do this again soon”, I want to! So badly! We’ve got at least a few months before it happens though, so before then, let me know in comments what you loved, what you hated, what you want more or less of. We can do whatever we want, and if we’re going to put on a great show next time I need to know what you all thought of the dizzying array of performances you saw.

If you’re around Brooklyn today you can go see Zach Herchen perform a reprise of Victoria Cheah’s Strange Loop at Vaudeville Park in Williamsburg, and if you’re looking for the awesomest thing to do tomorrow, go see Sylvana Joyce & The Moment, who closed our show last night, at Webster Hall!

I’ll write more about the show after more coffee and brunch (yes, including the cocktail recipes!), but for now, THANK YOU EVERYONE for making the night a wild, wild success!

Here’s what I mean. If you’re putting on a show, and you’re not a drummer, at some point you’re going to be standing around, having totally finished “your bit” of the work. You’ll have set up your guitar, or soundchecked your flute, or whatever, and the drummer will still be running back and forth to the car and lugging gear bags back to the stage.

It always happens. Drummers just have more to carry, more to set up, and then more to take down again when they’re doing a show. And if you, with your hands free, don’t decide to go help the drummer, here’s the thing:

I will never work with you again.

I won’t say anything, and I won’t think you’re a terrible person, and the show will go on. But when it comes time to put together the next show, I’m not calling you. Because you don’t carry drums.

When someone else has more to do than you, and you’re working towards the same goal, help them. Don’t look at the job as “my bit” and “their bit”. Look at the job getting done.

The new music group Eighth Blackbird is well known in music circles for passing this test with flying colors. There’s one drummer, and everyone moves the gear. Between shows, often most of them fly, and there’s a van on the ground driving filled with drums. They all take turns driving the van. Also they play music really well, and are doing a really cool thing right now with Amy Beth Kirsten, but that’s a different story…

Why talk about this now?

Because we have a show coming up on Saturday at the Exapno New Music Community Center. And it’s got all kinds of music on it, all kinds of different performances. And everyone working on the show would, I know, carry drums.

We’re going to be putting on a great show, and that’s the most important thing, but even before we load in to tech on Saturday afternoon, I’m proud of these artists. I’m looking forward to showing the audience not just a good time, but a great bunch of people making it happen together.

I could do that alone, imagining everything in my head. But theater’s funny. Once you get it up on its feet it’s a completely different animal. So I did something odd. I got a bunch of actors, a director, a choreographer, two cameras and lunch together one Saturday. And we rehearsed just those scenes. We experimented, changed, explored the characters, and came up with these videos here. They aren’t finished films, or even finished performances – we had 1 rehearsal. But they do tell the story I wanted to tell for these two scenes. I may change the timing to speed things up a little, and I may tweak a few of the gestures, but what I have to work with now is a video libretto for two of my mime sequences.

These two scenes happen before the play proper begins. We’re getting a look at both couples as they were before the plot happens. The four of them have gone off into the woods for a “picnic”, and then both couples go off on their own to… well… you know… canoodle. In these two videos Puck had the curly hair, and is watching what the humans are up to…

Wait, was that a pair of handcuffs?

Yes, that was a pair of handcuffs. We’ve created a motivation for Demetrius. Yes, we’ve created it out of thin air. Where else would we find one?

In the play, Demetrius spurns Helena and tries to force Hermia to marry him for… some… reason. She’s pretty, I guess. In this version, Demetrius is a stuffed up prude. And Helena, being a little more adventurous when they’re off canoodling in the woods, spooks him. That’s why he runs off and tries to get Hermia.

This way Demetrius has a motivation other than being randomly evil, Helena’s character is all set up for “use me as your spaniel” and, we hope, you can finally tell the four lovers apart! That’s not usually a feature of productions of Midsummer.

Here’s a final bit of video, that didn’t make it into the final run we did of the Helena/Demetrius scene, but I think will be useful as I actually start to compose this passage:

So…. whaddya think?

Funny? Convincing take on Midsummer? Good structure for the scenes? How about the crappy Cat Stevens I was playing in the background for mood music?

This Saturday, 8 PM, at the Exapno New Music Community Center, the curtain goes up. But we don’t have a curtain, since this is an extremely DIY, seat-of-your-pants, make-it-up-as-we-go-along kind of show. But we’ll start at 8. Or maybe a little later if people are having too much fun enjoying the cocktails.

Check out Exapno’s website if you need help getting there, and feel free to circulate the concert flyer as far and wide as you like. Doesn’t it make us look like an awesome underground dance club? Thanks, Victoria!

Check out the full program below for the astonishing range of stuff that will be happening this Saturday. As for my own music, Rachel Gawell is going to perform The Seafarer, which I wrote for her way back in the day, and which premiered on one of the very first No Signal shows.

Summer’s Twilight

We’re also going to be doing some improvisation with Mike Compitello on marimba and miming actors for Summer’s Twilight. At the heart of that piece is the interaction between the four lovers, played by singing actors, and the two fairies, who speak all their lines through the marimba or the cello. As I write the different sections, I need to know how the actors and the instrumentalists can communicate, how much they understand, how they control each other. I also need to know how much of that interaction is clear to the audience, so that I actually get the laughs that I want instead of just playing some music and doing some blocking and no one understanding it.

So this is research, but it’s also comedy improvisation. That’s why I’m quite so glad to have Mike Compitello, Casey Middaugh and Rose Ginsberg on hand. We’re going to learn a lot about Summer’s Twilight, and we’re going to make you laugh while we do it.

Ruckus Amongstus

The best way to RSVP is through the Facebook event. If you’re curious about who’s playing what or what any of this stuff is, just let me know in comments and I’ll tell you all about it – especially the delicious cocktails we’re creating for the evening, or your choice of youtube videos for us to use in improvising film scores….

Here’s our program, as it currently appears on the facebook event page.

Come out to Exapno for a VERY unusual evening.

We’ve got virtuoso performances of contemporary classics alongside pieces by composers right there in the room.

We’ve got a Bad Plus cover, spoken word, V-Day, physical improvisations, haunting female voices, and a folk/rock band jamming to close out the night.

PLUS: We’ve got Fantastic and Original Cocktails!
PLUS: We’ll play YOUR favorite YouTube videos, and IMPROVISE A SCORE!
…..Start submitting now in comments…..

And if you can’t make it in person, we’ll put as much of the show as we can up on YouTube in the weeks after the show so you can catch up on all the action!

Suggested donation: $10

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RUCKUS AMONGSTUS!
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Gestenstücke by Juan María Solare
Strangeloop by Victoria Cheah — WORLD PREMIERE
Giant by The Bad Plus
Khan Variations by Alejandro Vinao

***IMPROVISED YouTube Film Scores***

Physical Improv testing for Summer’s Twilight by Kevin Clark — WORK IN PROGRESS
We Two Boys by George Lam
Phthia

***IMPROVISED YouTube Film Scores***

Textual Healing
Monologue from “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer”
The Seafarer by Kevin Clark, translation by Burton Raffel
My pain by Edward Thomas-Herrera

***IMPROVISED YouTube Film Scores***

JAM!!!!

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PERFORMERS:
Peter Bellomo, Sara Phillips Budde, Kevin Clark, Dennis Clark, Dave Cohen, Michael Compitello, Sean-David Cunningham, Matthew Dunnam, Lainie Fefferman, Michael Feldman, Rachel Gawell, Rose Ginsberg, Zach Herchen, Jaime de Jesus, Alan Jeffries, Emily Kadish, Orlando Klass, George Lam, Robert Maril, Casey Middaugh, James Moore, Domenica Romagni, Andie Springer

Ian Richter is just such a one. I’ve crossed his path before, but the first time I got to know him properly we were sharing a car ride to New Haven where I spent most of the time talking about economics (don’t ask – it’s not a great way to keep everyone going during a road trip).

Gary Louie, the saxophone professor at Peabody, he of the sweet tone and dramatic arm movements, has taken to giving his students a crack at my setting of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. So at the end of the trip to New Haven for New Morse Code‘s premiere concert (it was great) I got this recording as well. Even better.

He’s still in school. But that hasn’t stopped him producing his own live recording, which for this piece requires a lot of re-balancing of the spoken and the played portions as well as all the usual mucking about with reverb and the rest of it. How many recordings feature the engineer performing, anyways? Neat, huh?

These three videos feature haiku by Mindy Klenoff, Georg Lauer and myself. The original Facebook thread on which they were written and the walls of Journeyman’s bathrooms have many more. As for performers: Elisabeth Halliday is singing, and Lorna Krier is playing a really cool piano/synthesizer hybrid. Those hands washing themselves belong to my uncle, Brian. Enjoy!

The concert’s at the Exapno New Music Community Center, where I’m on the board. The show features Florent Ghys, the illustrious French bass player and composer whose website reminds me that I really don’t know French very well.

Konrad Kaczmarek, Eleonore Oppenheim and Jascha Narveson are also on the program, with string loops, more double bass, and a toy piano. Exapno is a really interesting place, basically a co-working space for Brooklyn’s thronging composers that also hosts rehearsals and performances for its members. It’s a great resource for the field, and Lainie Fefferman is a fearless and tireless leader of the whole operation.

So come on out tomorrow night, hear some great music, and see if you might want to become a member of Exapno yourself! Here’s the vital information:

Friday, May 13 – 9:00pm
Exapno New Music Community Center
33 Flatbush Ave – 5th Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Gently suggested donation
Facebook Event

Zach and Elisabeth have done a tremendous job raising money and interest in their commissioning and recording project, and since they’ve just broken $3,500 they’ve added another composer to the project, Amy Beth Kirsten. I’ve known Amy since she, George Lam and I wrote operas together in 2005 for Peabody’s Opera Etudes program, and I really love her music. Some Ado was the best thing I’d ever done up until that point and then Amy just blew it off the stage with Ophelia Forever. One of my fondest hopes for Summer’s Twilight is to produce it alongside Amy’s Ophelia Forever as a double bill of Shakespeare music/theater experimentation.

You’re also in for a treat tomorrow at the Gershwin with Elisabeth’s performance of King Harald’s Saga by Judith Weir. King Harald is one of my favorite pieces ever, and I try to get people to perform it more basically so I can go and listen to them.

If you have any unwanted cash, by the way, at the time of this writing you still have 57 hours to give Zach and Elisabeth all your disposable income. Keep $10 for tomorrow’s ticket, but just give them the rest right now:

They’re launching their project with a fundraiser concert next month, featuring my piece, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, as well a personal favorite of mine, Judith Weir’s Kind Harald’s Saga. I’m not sure whether I’ll be in Plymouth for the concert, but if you can, don’t miss it – Elisabeth’s King Harald is phenomenal and Zach does an incredible job with his piece whenever he plays it.

Zach and Elisabeth are great musicians as well as wonderful friends and collaborators, and there’s no piece I’d rather have programmed with my music than King Harald’s Saga.

Sunday Dec. 19th @ 2pm (doors open at 1:30pm)
26 North Street, Plymouth, MA
Dr. Brian Whitfield’s music salon, entrance through side door
suggested $10 donation

Lori Laitman: I Never Saw Another Butterfly
Kevin Clark: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, for solo saxophone
Judith Weir: King Harald’s Saga, for solo soprano
Jason Belcher: Continuous Cities 2 and Lavender and the Newt