Douglas Geers
Ten or So
A moment from Alysse Stepanian's video,
Cutting
Play it! Hear an excerpt from this work. (Realaudio)
Ten Or So is a work for shakuhachi and electronics co-composed by
myself and Philip Mantione. Using the
collaborations of John Cage and Merce Cunningham as our inspiration,
decided to co-create a piece in a way that would celebrate serendipity.
To create the piece, we first agreed upon a minimal set of constraints,
the most significant of which was duration. Next, we each created a layer
of electroacoustic music based on a set of samples we had recorded of
shakuhachi player (and jazz pianist) Steve Cohn.
In performance, these two layers play simultaneously with
Steve's own live improvised shakuhachi playing. In the spirit of
exploration and
improvisation that the piece springs from, the first time Steve heard
the electoacoustic elements of the piece was while he was giving its
premiere performance.
This piece was designed to be performed with a concurrent video work,
entitled cutting, created by Alysse
Stepanian. Please see Alysse's site
for more information about and documentation of cutting and her
other works.
This
recording of
Ten or So is a live studio take of the piece, September, 1999.
Steve Cohn, shakuhachi.
For a video documentation of a performance of this piece, please email me.
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