The concert-series ‘Muziek als…’ as it premiered in the Biblioteca National was quite an enterprise. To say the least. One might also put it another way: an impossible project. To organise in a period of a little bit more than three weeks one presentation with composers in different countries, and two different concerts with in total 17 compositions, all demanding their own set up, with all the different musicians and rehearsals, is a hell of a job. But… all the difficulties taken into account, the outcome was miraculous. Two very interesting concerts, with a very diverse audience and for that matter an enthousiastic audience! (There were even families with children, something very unusual for a contemporary music concert) All in all, it was a great success and Ceci and Flor managed very well this crazy project. I want to express my deepest admiration for their relentless effort, their positive energy during the whole three weeks. I think I can say it was a very good experience for all of us involved; it was a dive into the deep and now we know it works; the concept of the concerts works, the pieces work and knowing that, we can shape up the programme, change some things, fine-tune, etc.
The tape concert was a real surprise show with all the objects and different tape and record players on stage. Together with the wonderful tape labyrinth of Luciana that created an environment where you could expect anything to happen.
The light concert was really a balanced concert with compositions very well matching each other. The quality of the compositions and the performance was very high as well. And the stage looked wonderful with the different lamps and the projected images... The tape programme was in my opinion more uneven, with very different compositions, but on the other hand, that also had it’s charm.
As I am part of the tape concerto I will focus on that. During the evalution Lola Linares asked me how I had experienced the concert as a whole (I had been talking a lot about my own composition). That was a good question. During the concert I was under quite some stress because of an unsolved technical problem concerning my piece (the last one of the concert). But even then, I could enjoy the concert. For me most pieces were completely new and surprising. I really enjoyed the concert as a whole (including my own piece, with the unsolved technical problem).
Cecilia and I were talking, back in Amsterdam, about the unevenness of the programme. It deals with a split between the more abstract compositions (like Abel Pauls La medida del mundo, a very interesting and also humorous piece) and more song like compositions, like Piet Jan van Rossum’s beautiful “A song”. But not only that, there are also different approaches of the theatrical element. Like Joke Kegel’s composition ‘Clouds of sound’ and Sofia Escardó’s composition ‘Beautiful songs, Beatle full songs’, which are more in a literal way using theatrical means: especially Sofia’s composition is more a theatre piece with music than theatre becoming really part of music. As music. Though I enjoyed the piece (it was funny and well performed) it is something with a very different approach. Also Joke’s piece is quite literal in the way it uses water as a theme, with sounds of water alongside a text of a singer also dealing with water. We really want to have a programme with pieces connected with each other in a same mentality, a shared approach. Which doesn’t mean of course that there can’t be differences in attitudes between composers or artists.
Apart from these considerations we also talked about the difficulties of the tapes concert. There was too much things on stage, getting in each other's way. e.g my changuito's were in the way of Luciana's original idea of a dynamic tape installation. The original idea was to start with a stage full of tapes, a real labyrinth, which would gradually change, because every musician after each piece would cut one or two tapes. The concert would end with an empty stage and then my composition could be started with the changuito's. We tried this idea of the changing tape installation in Lomas in the garden in the evening with some lamps and tapes and it looked fantastic! But alas, it was too ambitious for the short rehearsal time we had and so Luciana and Ceci decided on the last moment to change this idea for a permanent tape installation, above stage, so there was room for the changuitos to move.
It is a lot of words, blabla, which I expect not even the composers in the project will bother to read, but as I am writing somehow this clears my mind, and even if these words are here for eternity on the world wide web, (a nightmare) dear reader, be aware that it’s only a moment’s notice, and tomorrow my opinion might have changed. Consider this blog as a leaflets of a little booklet containing raw sketches, which some people share together; so whoever you are, and wherever you are, but mostly of all my dear fellow artists, I invite you to comment and contribute to this blog!
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