Emma Gross ’15 reviews “Sundanese & Javanese Puppet Plays”

Emma Gross ’15 reviews the “Sundanese & Javanese Puppet Plays,” performed on Saturday, April 27, 2013 at 8pm in World Music Hall as part of the Indonesian Performing Arts & Public Life Symposium, as well as “Music & Public Life,” a year-long campus and community-wide exploration, celebrating and studying the sounds, words, and spirit of music at the local, national, and transnational levels through concerts, workshops, gatherings, and courses, all designed to cross disciplines.

Sundanese wayang golek puppets.
Sundanese wayang golek puppets.

Gongs, xylophones, flutes, and drums of the Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble sounded throughout the World Music Hall on Saturday April 27. As this traditional Indonesian orchestra played, spectators flocked to the building’s windows to get a better look at the show. A packed audience sat within the hall, enraptured by the performers—only one of whom was human.

The play was an Indonesian “wayang,” or puppet play. The event I attended Saturday night was the final installment of the Indonesian Performing Arts & Public Life Symposium. This celebration of Indonesian theater ran Thursday, April 25 to Saturday, April 27. It included speakers, performances, and demonstrations related to wayang, including a talk by guest puppeteer Kathy Foley, Professor of Southeast Asian Drama and Dance at the University of California Santa Cruz; Sarah Weiss, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at Yale University; Ronald Jenkins, Wesleyan University Professor of Theater; and Javanese musician, scholar, and Wesleyan University Professor of Music Sumarsam.

Saturday’s sold-out wayang featured two types of Indonesian puppet play: Sundanese “wayang golek” and Javanese “wayang kulit.” The Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble, under the direction of Artist in Residence I.M. Harjito, provided the score for both acts.

The first segment showcased wayang golek, wooden doll puppets. Wayang golek are about a foot tall, and are operated by rods attached to the figures’ hands and running through their bodies. Each doll is embellished with intricate and elaborate costumes. Every puppet that performed in the show was clothed in vibrant colors and patterns; their bodies were detailed in gold, and their heads were carved with obvious care and precision into faces that could carry a range of emotional expression.

This spectacular ensemble of Sundanese figures performed a story from the “Babad Lokapala” cycle—the “prequel” to the “Ramayana,” describing how the demons and monkeys came to be. The audience sat cross-legged in the World Music Hall and watched, riveted, as the tale unfolded. This absolute viewer engagement speaks to the skill of the “dhalang,” or puppet master, Kathy Foley.

Ms. Foley was the sole puppeteer orchestrating the Sundanese “wayang golek.” She assumed the role of narrator, as well as the voice of every character. Ms. Foley endowed each puppet with distinctive mannerisms, gait, and speaking patterns. The entity and precise characteristics she brought to each figure succeeded in transporting the audience into the world at the front of the stage.

According to Ms. Foley, there are three character types in wayang golek: characters associated with adolescence, middle age, and as Ms. Foley describes, a final type that “represents our face as we approach our moment of death. They’re that part of us that screams, causes trouble, does everything else that’s sort of wild, and that we would love to forget.”

Together, these three character types performed a clever, engaging, moralistic, and comedic story. Ms. Foley maintained audience engagement not only through her adept puppet movement, voice inflection and facial expression, but also through her integration of humor into the narrative. At one point in the story, Ms. Foley remarked, “the monkeys, they sleep all day and stay up all night—just like Wesleyan students.”

At the end of the wayang golek act, audience members were treated to the Indonesian delicacy “lemper,” a dish made of glutinous rice filled with chicken. The lemper was homemade by a Middletown resident of Indonesian background, and distributed by Wesleyan students from Indonesia.

“The lemper was a delicious surprise,” remarked audience member Molly Steinfeld ‘15. “The evening was filled with introductions to various elements of Indonesian art and culture; the lemper added a tasty layer to this exploration.”

The second half of the show was dedicated to Javanese “wayang kulit,” or shadow puppets. “Kulit,” meaning skin, refers to the leather construction of the puppets. Each figure is carefully chiseled with fine tools and supported with carefully shaped buffalo horn handles and control rods. The shadows are cast on a cotton screen, and at Saturday’s performance, audience members were given the option of sitting on the viewing side of the puppets or the shadow side.

The dhalang for the second act was Wesleyan’s own Sumarsam, who told a story from the epic “Mahabharata.” The narrative involved a demon king, a guru in disguise, and a heavenly nymph. The plot, laden with desire, curses, comedy and confusion, was equally as enthralling as the Sundanese performance.

“The pace of a Javanese play is a lot more subdued than that of a Sundanese one,” explained Rizky Rahadianto ’15, a West Java native.

Mr. Rahadianto points to a key difference between the two acts. While the Sundanese puppets were constantly and vigorously moving—their gestures and dances were overstated and their voices were caricatures of the figures they portrayed—the Javanese figures were mostly stagnant; the incantation of their dialogue was slower, and the overall tone of the narrative felt calmer than that of the Sundanese.

Due to the more relaxed nature of wayang kulit and the viewer’s visual obstruction (caused by the cotton screen) from the characters, the audience’s engagement with the story is largely dependent on the expression of the dhalang.

“Sumarsam is an incredibly skilled dhalang,” commented Mr. Rahadianto. “His puppet movement and expression is perfectly executed. Sumarsam’s dialogue maintained the calm incantation of the Javanese wayang, but incorporated sharp social commentary and political humor, keeping viewers on their toes.”

Mr. Rahadianto was one of about ten Indonesian students in the audience at the performance Saturday night. “The last time I saw wayang was when I was in elementary school,” Mr. Rahadianto said. “Groups would come perform when we were younger, but never in middle or high school. This event allowed me to revisit part of my childhood. It was extremely nostalgic.”

Mr. Rahadianto explained that while wayang was popular when he was growing up, due to the influx of western television programming in Indonesian cities, there is less demand from young children today for puppet material. However, wayang continues to remain popular in more rural regions of Indonesia.

“I’m thrilled that Wesleyan made this opportunity available to its students and to the Middletown community,” said Mr. Rahadianto. “It’s a way to share and preserve Indonesian culture.”

Michelle Agresti ’14 talks to Jason Freeman about MiddletownRemix Festival (May 11)

Michelle Agresti ’14 talks to composer and computer musician Jason Freeman of UrbanRemix about MiddletownRemix: Hear More, See More – A Festival of Art and Sound, taking place on Saturday, May 11, 2013 from 2pm to 5pm. Wesleyan University’s Toneburst Laptop & Electronic Arts Ensemble, directed by Assistant Professor of Music Paula Matthusen, will perform the world premiere of “MTRX” (2012) by Jason Freeman on May 11 at 2pm, 3pm and 4pm at the Green Street Arts Center at 51 Green Street.

jasonfreeman
Jason Freeman.

MiddletownRemix: Hear More, See More – A Festival of Art and Sound may be a one-day event on Saturday, May 11, 2013, but it is in fact the culmination of a project that has been going on since September 2012, fittingly titled MiddletownRemix. This project has had people all over the greater Middletown area recording sounds of the environment on their phone and remixing them into soundscape compositions. These compositions can then be shared, and the project can be joined by anyone here. Each month, there are certain themes: April’s theme was “Forgotten/Lost,” and this month’s theme is “Natural.” And you can listen to featured remixes and sounds here. Since this past fall, people have been creating these unique sound pieces, making what seems to be ordinary Middletown background noise into moving compilations of found sound art. In a way, it could be akin to found poetry—only using your ears, not your eyes. During the day of the festival (May 11 from 2pm to 5pm), Middletown DJ Arun Ranganathan, along with Wesleyan University student DJs Coral Foxworth ‘15 and William Brewster Lee ’13, will remix the sounds of MiddletownRemix on the Remix Sound Stage outside It’s Only Natural Market at 575 Main Street.

MiddletownRemix is made possible with software from UrbanRemix, a program with a mobile phone recording component and an internet platform for recording, remixing, and sharing final products. Its goal, according to their website, is to “design a platform and series of public workshops that would enable participants to develop and express the acoustic identity of their communities, and enable users of the website to explore and experience the soundscapes of the city in a novel fashion.” It’s the brainchild of Jason Freeman, Michael Nitsche, and Carl DiSalvo, all professors at Georgia Tech. I spoke with Jason Freeman, an Associate Professor of Music in the College of Architecture at Georgia Tech, who was instrumental in bringing UrbanRemix to Middletown, and whose piece commissioned for the festival, “MTRX” (2012), premieres at 2pm, 3pm, and 4pm on May 11 at the Green Street Arts Center, located at 51 Green Street. The work will be performed by Wesleyan’s Toneburst Laptop & Electronic Arts Ensemble under direction of Assistant Professor of Music Paula Matthusen.

Mr. Freeman and his colleagues created UrbanRemix out of a desire to get people to pay more attention to the world around them. They wanted people to be able to rediscover and reaffirm appreciation for their hometowns and cities. Being musicians, they chose sound as the means to do this.

“We were really trying to come up with a way to help people become more aware of the sounds around them, to be able to listen to the sounds they might normally ignore and sort of block, and to actually take a moment to search for them and reflect about them—to share them,” explains Mr. Freeman.

But taking “ordinary” sounds from the environment and using them to create a piece is not an entirely new idea. UrbanRemix has its basis in the “fairly old,” according to Mr. Freeman, study of acoustic ecology. This art form began in the 1960s with R. Murray Schafer’s work on the “World Soundscape Project,” where he and others recorded the sounds of different environments and cities by just taking a recorder and listening.

Mr. Freeman and his colleagues, however, did not want to stop here.

“We really wanted to use technology to take this a step further,” he says. “We really wanted to do something more active to put people directly into the sound environment and ask them to identify sound.”

Well, there’s an app for that. They looked to cell phones, and made a program that would turn a mobile device into a recorder. Then, once sounds were recorded, they created a web interface that made the sounds easy to not only remix, but also to share. By using phones, Mr. Freeman and his colleagues made this technology, and therefore this art form, accessible to a very wide number of people. Thus, UrbanRemix was born.

But how did it make it to Middletown? Last year, Assistant Professor of Music Paula Matthusen invited her old friend and colleague Mr. Freeman to give a colloquium to her students at Wesleyan. While here, Mr. Freeman started talking to people in the Wesleyan Music Department, and they discovered that his work with UrbanRemix really fit in with “Music & Public Life,” a year-long campus and community-wide exploration that has included concerts, workshops, gatherings, and courses, all designed to cross disciplines. MiddletownRemix and Mr. Freeman’s involvement in the festival grew out of that collaboration.

The reason that Mr. Freeman’s work and “Music & Public Life” meshed so well together is because the “Music & Public Life” project examines how music interacts with public spheres, such as with public policy, or the digital realm, or even the community at Wesleyan and Middletown as a whole. The project is “celebrating and studying the sounds, words, and spirit of music in public at the local, national, and transnational levels.”  The main goal of MiddletownRemix, aside from getting residents to hear their city in a whole new way, is to let them know and explore their community through sound. The idea is that the project will bring people closer together, and give them insight into the communal, and public, character of Middletown.

“I think it’s a fun way to explore and discover the city in a way they haven’t really experienced it before, and to use that as a basis for connecting with other people,” says Mr. Freeman.

While MiddletownRemix itself is an on-going project that anyone can participate in at any time at www.middletownremix.org, the public presentation of remixes by DJ Ranganathan, Coral Foxworth ’15, William Brewster Lee ’13, and others at the MiddletownRemix festival will expose you to a Middletown you may have overlooked. Come check them out at the festival on Saturday, May 11 from 2pm to 5pm, but in the meantime, you could take MiddletownRemix for a spin yourself—see what sounds you can find!

For the complete MiddletownRemix festival schedule, and to capture, contribute and remix sounds from Wesleyan and Middletown using the free UrbanRemix app for iPhone/iOS and Android devices, visit http://www.middletownremix.org

Aletta Brady ’15 talks to Joe McCarthy and Peter Albano about MiddletownRemix Festival (May 11)

Music & Public Life Intern Aletta Brady ’15 talks to photographer and filmmaker Joe McCarthy and woodcut artist, bookbinder, papermaker, and muralist Peter Albano about MiddletownRemix: Hear More, See More – A Festival of Art and Sound, taking place on Saturday, May 11, 2013 from 2pm to 5pm. The art/sound installation “Camera Obscura,” a temporary 16′ X 8′ “camera” commissioned for the festival, will be installed on the corner of Main Street and Grand Street by Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Albano. The installation will also be featured outside of the Usdan University Center at 45 Wyllys Avenue the week leading up to the festival, from Monday May 6 through Thursday, May 9, 2013.

Photographer and filmmaker Joe McCarthy (left) and woodcut artist, bookbinder, papermaker, and muralist Peter Albano (right), working on their art/sound installation “Camera Obscura,” commissioned for the MiddletownRemix Festival, taking place on Saturday, May 11 from 2pm to 5pm.

In mid-April, I biked over to Peter and Joe’s house after I got off of work at the Center for the Arts. When I arrived, they were out in their backyard working on building their art installation that will be featured at MiddletownRemix: Hear More, See More – A Festival of Art and Sound on Saturday, May 11 from 2pm to 5pm. The installation is titled “Camera Obscura.” They happily showed me around the frame of the piece that they were working on, and invited me to join them around their coy pond for our interview.

Peter Albano is a graduate of the University of Hartford Art School where he studied printmaking, and Joe McCarthy studied photography and film in Boston and Los Angeles, before the two of them met in Middletown, and collaborated as artists on the Hog River Revival Project in Hartford. They described their project for the MiddletownRemix festival as “pinhole photography, just on a much larger scale—a pinhole camera that you can walk inside of. The sound element going on will [make it] a full sensory experience inside the camera”.

They had a lot of great things to say about the MiddletownRemix festival, and their role in it. Here are some highlights from our conversation:

Aletta Brady ‘15: Tell me about your art/sound installation “Camera Obscura” that will be displayed at the MiddletownRemix festival.

Joe McCarthy: We started thinking about the idea of creating this soundscape that was basically just taken, much like the [MiddletownRemix] project, from the streets. Nothing really created, more just arranged. And then we thought, “well, what kind of visual can match that sound element?” And, you know, the most bare bones, un-augmented camera is just a simple pinhole lens. There’s nothing to focus it, it is what it is, it’s just light. It use[s] the visuals from the streets of Middletown that are literally just what’s in front of your eyes. Its kind of like removing people from Main Street in order for them to more clearly view Main Street, or more clearly experience Main Street.

Peter Albano: One of the issues that we encountered was incorporating a sound element that highlighted the visual elements, because those are two completely different senses, and we landed on the idea of creating and taking one out of the environment, and that’s what the structure to walk into was, rather than any structure you just observe.

Aletta Brady ‘15: Why were you interested in creating an installation for the MiddletownRemix festival in particular?

Joe McCarthy: I think that we were both really excited that [the festival] is all about Middletown, like two blocks from where we make work, you know? ‘Cause the area that you choose to be in definitely has an influence on your work, and this sort of opportunity has allowed that influence to come to the front, which is healthy sometimes.

Conceptual drawing of “Camera Obscura,” a temporary 16′ X 8′ “camera,” which will be installed on the corner of Main Street and Grand Street during the MiddletownRemix Festival on Saturday, May 11 from 2pm to 5pm.

Aletta Brady ‘15: Tell me about yourselves as artists and your own personal journeys.

Peter Albano: I come from a much different background technique-wise than Joe. I’m much more of a drawer. I studied printmaking in college. I never dabbled in photography until the Hog River project. What drew me to this project was the scale of it, and the idea of getting it to work, making it work. It’s an endeavor. On a more broad scheme, I think most of our work revolves around the idea of highlighting the citizen that passes [and] community involvement. The Hog River project was a Hartford-centric project, and it revolved around the gathering of people and the sharing of information, and I think this project is a nice step up from there.

Joe McCarthy: All of my work, it just is a kind of way for me to break down something that I’m curious about. The subject matter is always on a personal level derived from me trying to reconcile my thoughts about one thing or another. Technically, the work I do has a lot to do with light, and in the Hog River project, that was all about [light], because there wasn’t any of it. That kind of became [the “Camera Obscura” project], where you have all the light in the world, and it’s all about limiting it and blocking it out and controlling the light.

Aletta Brady ‘15: What are you most excited about for Saturday May 11, the day of the MiddletownRemix festival?

Peter Albano: The flash mob dance [at 2:30pm in front of It’s Only Natural Market at 575 Main Street].

Joe McCarthy: I always get a kick out of being able to stand away from my work and watching how people interact with it, its always fun. Its cool to make something and there’s nothing you can do, it’s out there now, so all you have to do is just stand back and no one knows like, “oh those are the guys that made it.” So you can just stand there and watch someone, or go into the camera with someone, and really just pay attention to how that stranger interacts with this completely new thing to them. Its impossible to be objective. By the end of this camera, neither one of us will be able to say its good or bad, or if it worked or it didn’t, ‘cause we’re way too close to it, so I’m always curious about what the reveal on a finished piece of work is to a clean set of eyes.

For the complete MiddletownRemix festival schedule, and to capture, contribute and remix sounds from Wesleyan and Middletown using the free UrbanRemix app for iPhone/iOS and Android devices, visit http://www.middletownremix.org

Michelle Agresti ’14 talks to Ronald Kuivila about MiddletownRemix Festival (May 11)

Take a Deep Breath and Open Your Ears
A preview of “Rainforest IV” and “Lighthouse, beside the point”

Michelle Agresti ’14 talks to University Professor of Music Ronald Kuivila about MiddletownRemix: Hear More, See More – A Festival of Art and Sound, taking place on Saturday, May 11, 2013 from 2pm to 5pm. The world premiere of Professor Kuivila’s sound installation commissioned for the festival, “Lighthouse, beside the point,” will be located in the glass pavilion atop the Community Health Center at 675 Main Street. Professor Kuivila and Wesleyan University music students are also reconstructing David Tudor’s “Rainforest IV” (1973) inside of 635 Main Street.

Wesleyan University Professor of Music Ronald Kuivila reconstructing David Tudor’s “Rainforest IV” (1973) inside of 635 Main Street in Middletown in preparation for the MiddletownRemix festival on Saturday, May 11.

For MiddletownRemix: Hear More, See More – A Festival of Art and Sound on Saturday, May 11, Wesleyan University Professor of Music Ronald Kuivila will be premiering his sound installation “Lighthouse, beside the point,” as well as realizing  David Tudor’s sound composition “Rainforest IV.” To interview Professor Kuivila, I visited the future site of “Rainforest IV,” which is in an abandoned storefront on Main Street. I watched with curiosity as Ron briskly strode across the unfinished floor, past the roughed up dry-wall, and in between bare pipes stretching from the ceiling, setting up a speaker. While I followed him with my recorder, Ron explained his vision and purpose for the installation.

“[It’s] based on this idea that loud speakers can be themselves instruments,” Professor Kuivila explains. “The idea of ‘Rainforest’ is to take objects from the junk pile, say a door, oil drum, bicycle rim, and turn them into loudspeakers that have their own distinctive voices.”

The way that Professor Kuivila would accomplish this is by attaching a transducer, or the coil and magnet from inside of a loudspeaker, to the part of the object with the most resonance. The way speakers work is by that coil causing a piece of cardboard, or some other light material inside the speaker box, to vibrate back and forth—“Rainforest IV” just replaces the cardboard with a door, or an air duct, or suit of armor. Then, sounds (but not composed music) are broadcast through the transducer, causing the object to vibrate and give off a unique voice.

The abandoned shop front at 635 Main Street will soon be filled with objects like this, all of which will be giving off sound at varying times and volumes. The “performance” is always going on—for hours at a time. People will be let into the room on Saturday, May 11 from 2pm to 5pm, and allowed to wander at will.  Professor Kuivila says that “Rainforest IV” experiences tend to go like this: the first half hour is spent touring all the pieces (“like a science fair,” he says), then it shifts to a “cocktail party”-like atmosphere with people chatting with each other, and finally, about 45 minutes in, everyone settles down and really begins to listen.

“You become acquainted with these objects, which have sculptural properties. It really is like a sculptural installation,” he describes. “You’re becoming aware of them through the sounds they are producing, and becoming aware of their physicality through that sound in a way that you would find difficult to do without the sound. The composer David Tudor described [that] his goal was for a tuned environment.”

This work is “Rainforest IV;” there are also “Rainforests” I-III, all composed by David Tudor, from 1968 to 1973. These works (especially “Rainforest” and “Rainforest IV,” the only two that are recorded) have been re-created and performed at various places.

Even though the production of “Rainforest IV” in Middletown is in the preliminary stages, Professor Kuivila was still able to demonstrate part of the installation. Taking the speaker that he had been plugging in all over the room in search of a working outlet, he feeds the microphone connected to the speaker into a silver tube, which is attached to a long pipe on the ceiling. Discontent with the sound produced, he screws off the silver tube and just puts the microphone into the pipe. The pipe, he tells me, is connected to the outside of the building.

“If you actually listen, you can hear the outside filtered through the resonances of the pipe. It’s generally quite beautiful,” says Professor Kuivila.

Listening to the loudspeaker, the noises of cars honking, trucks driving by, and children yelling are converted to haunting, lingering versions of themselves. Ron is unsurprisingly right: the ordinary sounds of afterschool traffic are transformed into something captivating. I remark that the particular reverberations we are listening to sound like the background to a horror film—but that’s just me. As it turns out, individual experiences with this piece are important.

In fact, according to Professor Kuivila, “the point of the piece is to create a situation where everyone has a very unique and original encounter with the soundworld.” With construction barely started, I was able to have my own, in a compelling way.

As for “Rainforest IV” as a whole, Professor Kuivila says, “it’s really a piece about learning how to do electronic music. It’s a piece to teach people about this idea of hearing sounds not as part of a tonal continuity, but as kind of complete in themselves. It’s a way of thinking of music not based on the voice, but based on the world.”

Professor Kuivila is also putting up his own original work commissioned for the MiddletownRemix festival, called “Lighthouse, beside the point,” in the beautiful glass pavilion atop the new Community Health Center at 675 Main Street. “Lighthouse” is based on transferring some of the phenomena of looking out a lighthouse into a soundscape. He uses “very very” directional speakers, that shoot sound out in very specific streams—you have to be directly in line with the sound stream to hear it, mimicking the very specific sightline of the light of the lighthouse.

“I was interested in this idea of connecting sightlines to particular sounds that would somehow reveal what you’re looking at,” explains Professor Kuivila.

Additionally, in the room, which Ron describes as furnished “like a set from ‘Mad Men,’” there will be old-fashioned telephones placed around. They will ring occasionally, and once picked up, will broadcast half of a word into a person’s ear. The other half of the word will be broadcast by a speaker into the room. While the sound broadcast into the room will sound like a vague noise, the syllables coming through the phone will make it recognizable—if you’re listening with both ears.

“You’re having to listen in this way you never do with a telephone, “ says Professor Kuivila. Instead of just focusing on what is coming through the phone, like we would normally do, you are forced to expand your attention to the environment around you.

In fact, this “direction of attention,” a phrase that Ron used a variety of times during our interview, is very much a part of not only “Lighthouse” and “Rainforest,” but it is a major theme of the entire MiddletownRemix festival. Professor Kuivila describes the event as a way of creating an alertness to the sounds of Middletown, instead of ignoring them as part of daily life. It is using sound to raise aural awareness and lead people to appreciate the world around them more.

“Because we live so much texting and looking at little things here,” says Professor Kuivila, indicating his phone, “we tend to lose sight of the extent to which our giving our attention over to something can become a very powerful and beautiful experience.”

For the complete MiddletownRemix festival schedule, and to capture, contribute and remix sounds from Wesleyan and Middletown using the free UrbanRemix app for iPhone/iOS and Android devices, visit http://www.middletownremix.org

Aletta Brady ’15 talks to DJ Arun Ranganathan about MiddletownRemix Festival (May 11)

Music & Public Life Intern Aletta Brady ’15 talks to DJ Arun Ranganathan about MiddletownRemix: Hear More, See More – A Festival of Art and Sound, taking place on Saturday, May 11, 2013 from 2pm to 5pm.  Arun has been commissioned to create a 30-minute remix based on the sounds of MiddletownRemix, which will be performed live at both 2pm and 4pm on the main sound stage outside of It’s Only Natural Market at 575 Main Street, interspersed with remixes by Wesleyan student DJs.

DJ Arun Ranganathan

I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking with Arun Ranganathan—also known as DJ N.E.B.—a local hip hop artist, producer and DJ from Middletown’s North End. DJ N.E.B. will be dropping beats on the main stage during MiddletownRemix: Hear More, See More – A Festival of Art and Sound on May 11. A beloved member of the Middletown community, he told me about his work, and why he’s excited about the upcoming festival. Here are some excerpts from our interview:

Aletta Brady ‘15: How did you get in to DJing?

DJ N.E.B.: Friends of mine back in the day, like, 1983, got me into hip hop break dancing, and then they were like “Oh you gotta see this guy DJ,” and we went out to Plaza Drive, and one of the kids there, this Puerto Rican kid named RC, used to set up his turn tables and DJ for the entire courtyard, and we’d all get together and dance, and that was when I was like “Ah man I gotta get myself a pair of those.” I started in 1985, I was eleven, and then I never stopped.

Why did you decide to be a part of the MiddletownRemix festival?

I got a call from a few friends of mine saying that there was this cool remix project. My buddy Topher showed me [the MiddletownRemix] website and I signed up for it like six, seven months ago. I would go there once in a while and listen to what other people did and I was like “wow.” When Erinn [Roos-Brown, Program Manager at the Center for the Arts] called me up [in the spring] and explained it to me, I just liked the idea. I’ve always wanted to get into recording ambient sounds like we used to do it a long time ago, just gather stuff. I like to experiment with sound and record samples through speakers or in hallways and see how it sounds. And people were gathering sounds already. All I had to do was take them and manipulate them. When [Erinn] said “do you want to do it?” I was really excited about that ‘cause its something that I’ve always wanted to do. It’s a step away from sampling records or creating my own sounds out of samples, ya know? That was a new challenge for me, something refreshing, something I haven’t done before.

Tell me about the remixes that you’re creating for the MiddletownRemix festival. 

So far, I have three that I’ve done, and I have a couple concepts for the next two. I’m going to make about three ½ minute pieces, but I’m going to be DJing them live, so they’ll end up being five minutes a piece, ‘cause I’m going to do some turn-tableism with them. I just try to be inspired by something, so I just go through the samples that I grab from the [MiddletownRemix] website, and I don’t really have any plan, but when something is just like “Oh yea that was really cool” I’ll experiment and something happens, something comes out of it. [One] song was inspired by my friend Brian, he’s sort of like a grumpy artist around here, and the recording that the person got was perfect, ‘cause they were like “hey talk” and [Brian] was like “no, we’ve already been through this, stop recording,” and I thought that was hilarious, ‘cause it illustrated him, so I made a beat, and then just used that as the main. Another one that I most recently made was entirely off of sounds, I got somebody banging on a table for a kick drum, and I created a snare out of it, and somehow somebody made a weird sound with their mouth, and it sounded like a high hat, and I strung together a piece called “bells,” the St. Johns Bells, and that sounded really cool. It also incorporated a sample of a kid, a rougher sample. The contrast of these kids getting into trouble and the pure bells in the background seemed like a cool contrast.

How does the MiddletownRemix project connect with your community?

I’m recognizing people, and I know a lot of people that uploaded stuff. I’m familiar with the ambient sounds, it reminds me of my neighborhood and it just feels good that I’m able to do that, living in that neighborhood, using sounds mostly from that neighborhood. It’s truly a collaboration, because I’m using other people’s recordings which [is] fun. It’s a lot of fun. I feel like I’m connected to my community even more now,  ‘cause I can take audio samples and make a piece out of it.

What are you most looking forward to about the MiddletownRemix festival?

I hope that people come out and recognize things that I sampled, and maybe like “ah that’s something I recorded.” I’m looking forward to being able to just mix my own pieces that are from that environment and hear it loud. That’s the best part of it all.

For the complete MiddletownRemix festival schedule, and to capture, contribute and remix sounds from Wesleyan and Middletown using the free UrbanRemix app for iPhone/iOS and Android devices, visit http://www.middletownremix.org

“MiddletownRemix: Hear More, See More” Festival Launch Party on Monday February 4

Take a moment to close your eyes and listen. What do you hear? Take a quick inventory. Now what if you could take those sounds, mix them up and make something new with them?

That’s what we are doing with MiddletownRemix.

MiddletownRemix is a year-long, Middletown-specific sound project presented by the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University in collaboration with numerous organizations in the community. MiddletownRemix invites everyone in Middletown to record sounds (up to one minute long each) and upload them to the MiddletownRemix website where they are geo-tagged on a Google map. For individuals who do not have access to a smart phone, 10 devices have been made available to checkout at the Green Street Arts Center, located at 51 Green Street. We want to hear the sounds that make up your daily life and create the soundscape of your city.

But you can do more then just record sounds – you can create new ones. After recording your sounds, you can remix them, and any of the other sounds on the site, with the tools on the website, or by downloading and remixing the sounds with your own software. Then, share it with your friends on Facebook or Twitter (@WesCFA #MTownRemix). By revealing the composer within us all, this project can challenge or change perceptions of Middletown. Every week, we are featuring one sound and one remix on our website so be sure to check back often to see if your sound or remix has been selected.

Since the project began in May 2012, Middletown community members have already recorded over 660 sounds and created 75 remixes, and we anticipate gathering over 1,500 sounds and remixes by the “MiddletownRemix: Hear More, See More” Festival on May 11, 2013. The Festival will celebrate the community’s work on this project. Stationed in the North End Arts District, the Festival will include commissions of local sound and visual artists, a flash mob, a gallery walk, a laptop orchestra commission [the world premiere of “MTRX” (2012) by Jason Freeman of UrbanRemix], live remixing and other sound related programming – all of which will be based on the recordings of MiddletownRemix. We believe that if people listen deeply, they will see more.

If you are interested in learning more about the Festival, join us at the Community Health Center, located at 675 Main Street, on Monday, February 4, 2013 at 5pm for a presentation and question and answer session.

Katherine Clifford ’14 reviews the Winter Dance Concert: “Impulse”

Katherine Clifford ’14 attends the Winter Dance Concert, “Impulse,” presented by the Wesleyan Dance Department.

Photo by Kim Ladd ’13.

The Winter Dance Concert, Impulse, took place on December 7 and 8, 2012. It featured works by dance majors Sally Williams ’14, Kim Ladd ’13, Elisa Waugh ’13, Jiovani del Toro Robles ’13, Elle Bayles ’14, and Naya Samuels ’14.

I was struck by the incredible diversity of the pieces: in their range of styles, their themes, and their influences. Winter Dance is choreographed by dance majors, in collaboration with the dancers in each piece [and under the direction of Adjunct Professor of Dance Susan Lourie]. In this way, each piece was shaped by the various contributions and backgrounds of each of the dancers. As a whole, the concert incorporated a wide range of media and interdisciplinary influences through the use of projected images, performed song, breakdancing, and AcroYoga (acrobatic yoga).

How does one sum up movement through words, words that seem so static on the page? Each piece left me with a resounding feeling, reminding me of the power of dance to leave an impact on the audience and to make a statement. I think it will be sufficient to sum up the dance concert by saying a few words about what struck me in each piece. Hopefully, this will be a small testament to the incredible talent and creativity of the choreographers and dancers.

Sally Williams’ piece incorporated projected written word and a kissing motif, in which the dancers made sloppy kissing noises that reminded one of a loving grandmother. On a whole, her piece was interesting, provocative, and had a captivating quality of movement.  Kim Ladd’s piece had a strong group dynamic and a circular unity in the composition of the piece. The dancers started and ended in the same pose, serving as a reference point to the beginning of the dance and all that had passed. Elisa Waugh’s dance was interesting in that there were singers performing on stage, providing background music and context to the dance through song. I was captured by the thrilling music in Jiovani del Toro Robles’ piece, which reminded me of the soundtrack of an adventure movie. The dancers’ movements were bold and exciting and matched the music well. The piece even featured breakdance moves by dancer Dat Tien Vu ’15. Elle Bayles’ dance was beautifully composed and the dancers exuded strength and confidence. The dancers’ interactions with each other reminded me of the trust and support that occurs between close friends. Finally, I would characterize Naya Samuels’ dance by the fantastic contact made between the dancers and the great strength and trust required as the dancers lifted each other and supported each other’s weight in poses resembling AcroYoga. The dancing was fluid, with lingering between movements and shifts in weight, making the movements flow together.

As a whole, Winter Dance spoke to the amazing talent in the dance community. Each piece was remarkable in its own way, revealing the potential of dance to say so many things at once.

Michael Darer ’15 attends a performance by Dither Electric Guitar Quartet

Michael Darer ’15 attends a performance by Dither Electric Guitar Quartet in Crowell Concert Hall on November 16, 2012.

Photo by Isabelle Selby.

It’s easy to forget the sheer variability of an instrument like the electric guitar, which has been sequestered in such a distinctive part of our musical psyche, labeled by the deluge of pop and rock that we digest almost mindlessly day to day. We assume that we’re familiar with all the instrument can do, with the heart and soul of its sound because, well, with the sheer amount of music in which it appears, it seems nonsensical to think that somewhere in the musical universe there is an electric guitar that sounds nothing like the one we know. Ridiculous and overblown a comment as this may seem, it’s really the truth for most of us. If someone asked you to imagine the sound of the instrument, most of us would probably settle on similar tones. Maybe one person would realize the harsh dynamic screeching of Rage Against the Machine, while others conjure the more open glassy chords of U2, but in the end, it would be rare for someone to imagine a piece of music that others cannot recognize as coming from the prescribed instrument.

The Dither Electric Guitar Quartet, which visited Wesleyan on Friday, November 16, however, is not content with the homogenous image that guitar music represents to most music listeners. Through complex arrangements, varying in tempo, texture and organization, they’ve striven to reinvent the guitar, and reestablish the mass of sonic possibilities at the instrument’s disposal, for all and any who will listen. Based in New York and founded in 2007, the Dither Guitar Quartet is “dedicated to an eclectic mix of experimental repertoire, spanning composed music, improvisation and electronic manipulation”, a multivalent commitment that they displayed in full disorienting force during their recent performance. I’d like to consider myself someone who is familiar, or at least interested, in a wide range of musical styles, but even I found myself consistently wowed, and altogether lost (in the best way possible) during my time with their music.

Each piece of music that Dither played seemed to wind and fold upon itself, constantly expanding and contracting, reaching piercing ethereal highs and diving into throbbing opaque depths. Sections seemed to split off from the sound of the whole before snaking back around and rejoining the flow of the composition, combining with other, seemingly disparate portions in unique and magical ways. It was almost impossible to assume where a song might be headed, and even if one did end in some place similar to what I’d imagined, the route there was festooned with detours that I never could have anticipated. Few musicians can imbue their work with the sense of organic, wholly transcendent wonder that Dither did, and those who do often require a wide range of instruments. Here, however, with four copies of one tool, the quartet managed to create expansive and varied soundscapes, each so distinct from the next.

Musical improvisation in general has always floored me. As someone who thinks about things almost obsessively, the idea of just imagining and creating simultaneously is unbelievably impressive. As such, Dither was bound to blow my mind. It was impossible to tell which sections of pieces were pre-written and which were off the cuff, how much each player anticipated from his fellows and how much each had to adapt to along the way. But rather than making the songs sound wholly rehearsed, this unreal sort of synchronicity between musicians made every note seem tenuous and energized, every stretch of sound totally ephemerally fundamental. As songs shifted from serrated distortion to stinging pop clarity, every movement, dip, sidestep and leap rang out as monumental and crucial to the integrity of the whole. Listening to music, it’s very easy to discount certain pieces while exalting others within a song, waiting for the moments that touch us and forgetting the avenues that bring us to them. With Dither, there was no danger of this. Every single moment in every single song reached out. There were no half-developed bridges, only existing in order to reach a refrain or a crescendo. Instead, everything on display was just that: on display; on display in magnificent recondite beauty.

It was somewhat intimidating to think about writing up this event, knowing how hard it would be to describe the sound of the experience. Truly, part of the power of the concert was coming upon those moments in the music that seemed to dance around description, remove themselves from any sort of context or known rooting. And that’s what made the Dither quartet so unforgettable: knowing that, even if I were to see them again, I would never recover the exact place that I was moment by moment when I first heard them; knowing that even as I was attempting to understand and remember the music, it was receding back beyond explanation, gradually revealing the next evanescent jewel, so soon to disappear.

Michael Darer ’15 reviews concert by B. Balasubrahmaniyan

Michael Darer ’15 attends a concert presented by vocalist B. Balasubrahmaniyan, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music; as well as David Nelson, Artist in Residence, and violinist L. Ramakrishnan.

David Nelson (left) and B. Balasubrahmaniyan.

One of the most frustrating things about seeing a great concert is how effortlessly the musicians seem to produce their sounds, while at the same time recognizing how complex and daunting the music truly is. As someone wholly ungifted with any sort of instrument (a deficiency for which I compensate with oppressive, too loudly aired opinions), this sort of dual recognition is especially apparent to me whenever I see truly gifted musicians perform. I find myself awed, annoyed and baffled at how incredibly deftly instrumentalists and vocalists produce their art in all its dumbfounding intricacy, while knowing that I would probably break whatever instrument they’re handling if I so much as attempted to play scales. However, there are some times, in the presence of brilliant music, when even this mental poltergeist is unable to sneak into my perception of a show. Sometimes, that seemingly incompatible ease and complexity meld together. My evening listening to B. Balasubrahmaniyan was such an occasion.

Balu, a vocalist specializing in South Indian music and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at the University, was originally supposed to perform at the Navaratri Festival in mid-October but was, unfortunately, forced to postpone due to illness. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to sing as originally scheduled, for, as someone with little knowledge of Indian music, it would have been interesting to compare his style and material to other acts, but, on the whole, I’m simply glad I got to see him at all.

With Balu that night, was Artist in Residence David Nelson, playing the mridangam (a percussion instrument featured prominently in Carnatic music, which Nelson specializes in) and violinist, L. Ramakrishnan. Sitting in a semi-circle on the stage of Crowell, the three men proceeded to produce two hours of some of the most complex, astounding music that I’ve ever heard.

Before I gush, however, a quick background on Carnatic music:

Carnatic music, which is considered one of the two major types of classical Indian music, is associated mainly with the southern part of India. It is usually performed by three individuals, one of whom is the main performer, while another provides melodic accompaniment, and the third, rhythmic accompaniment. Carnatic music is organized around four main “principles”: relationships in pitch between notes (sruti), cycles of rhythm (tala), the individual note (swara), and the overall structure of the piece (raga). These components pop up both in improvisation and scripted performance and, together, form the essential musical backbone of the genre.

When considering these four ideas, it is hard not to notice the dual emphases on individual sounds and the way in which those sounds fit into the larger sonic landscape. When listening to Balu, though I was unaware at the time of the specifics of each aforementioned principle, this was abundantly clear. Each of the three musicians produced an individually magnificent thread of sound, from Nelson’s alternating, multi-faceted tempos, to the violin’s mournful swoops, to Balu’s dynamically wavering voice. Each portion of the whole displayed unprecedented musical eloquence and, on its own, each was magnificent. However, none were really the “focus” per se. Certainly, Balu was front and center, but even his singing never dominated the trajectory of the music. Rather, the unique sounds created by the ensemble, so unique and driving on their own, flowed into one another like tributaries, bleeding together to form a whole, which constantly evolved, writhed, and drew on the diverse energies of its components. The result was nothing short of mesmerizing.

Leaving the performance, I, for the first time in a while, felt as though I had stumbled upon some sort of fundamental musical aesthetic that, if I had unknowingly been conscious of in the past, had for the longest time remained impossible to articulate. The way in which Balasubrahmaniyan and company had blended their sounds seemed elemental, as natural as the mixing of colors to create something richer. At the same time, though, the three men, the music that they played, functioned with such a respect for the depth of each part that the result seemed to transcend the mixture as well as the ingredients, reaching out past the resources that seemed available to tap into something wonderfully intricate and ethereally unified.

Emma Gross ’15 previews Rinde Eckert’s “The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy” (Nov. 15-17)

Emma Gross ’15 attended a rehearsal for the upcoming production of Rinde Eckert’s “The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy,” which will run Thursday, November 15 through Friday, November 17, 2012. Performances will be held in the CFA Theater at 8pm Thursday through Saturday, plus a 2pm matinee on Saturday.

Photo by Emma Gross ’15.

In the week leading up to Halloween, I accompanied Sivan Battat ’15 to her evening rehearsal for Visiting Artist in Theater and Creative Campus Fellow Rinde Eckert’s production of “The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy.” Rehearsal was scheduled to run from 7pm to 11pm. When I asked how often these four-hour rehearsals were held, Sivan replied, “Just six days a week. But with opening night approaching, I assume Saturday hours will be added as well.”

I began calculating the amount of time Sivan had spent in the CFA Theater since preparation for the play began in early September and how many more hours she would devote to the production in the remaining three and a half weeks before the performance. Though I was slightly overwhelmed by this work schedule, it was Sivan’s next comment that thoroughly shocked me: “And we have yet to see a finished script for the play.”

Thus was my initiation into the unconventional creative process of director Rinde Eckert.

Mr. Eckert is a Grammy Award-winning writer, composer, librettist, musician, performer and director. He was the finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and in 2009 received The Alpert Award for his contributions to theater. In April 2012, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation named Mr. Eckert an inaugural Doris Duke Artist.

Photo by Emma Gross ’15.

In Mr. Eckert’s artist statement, he describes his theater projects as “fiercely interdisciplinary.” He explains: “My work occurs on stage with lights and sound, and usually music, and is deeply concerned with language.  Using various theatrical forms to say what I have to say, I am interested more in poetic gestalt than in narrative, though there is usually a central narrative that I treat as a kind of fugue subject or governing metaphor.  I need to feel I’m learning with each new project, and that each work is a piece of a much larger puzzle.  I think I do my best work in an atmosphere of joy and critical thought, in that order. There is such a thing as soul and good theatre elevates it.”

Wesleyan’s Creative Campus Initiative, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, commissioned Mr. Eckert to develop “The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy.” The world premiere of this production will take place in the CFA Theater on Thursday November 15. Additional performances will run through Saturday, November 17.

“‘The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy’ is a story grounded in the experience of the wild child, or a man raised by wolves, who is taken and initiated into the human world,” Mr. Eckert explained. “The piece takes us from the moment the boy is found, through the turning point in his life when he goes back to kill the man responsible for his capture. When the wild child meets this man, however, he finds a broken human being. Consequently, his desire to kill evaporates. The wild child is freed from his thirst for revenge, and his life opens up. The piece is about the education of this boy and his journey, as an older man, to recover his original, less conditioned or acculturated self.”

The night I sat in on the rehearsal, I gained insight into Rinde’s progressive, hands-on, and exploratory approach to developing this piece.

As soon as we arrived at the CFA Theater, Sivan and the seven other cast members changed into their costumes. They emerged in black canvas body suits, complete with a hood and a sheer black flap, which concealed their faces. These outfits also included side pockets filled with chalk. As one actor indicated by sketching a few circles onto his sleeve, the surfaces of the costumes, including the face flap, are entirely chalkable.

“The costumes in ‘The Last Days of the Old Wilde Boy’ are identical to encourage equality among cast members,” explained Assistant Director Claire Whitehouse ‘13. “This is an ensemble production, and gender in this play does not determine character.”

Photo by Emma Gross ’15.

The onstage set included a chalk board that ran the length of the stage, two fifteen foot tall paper man marionettes, close to 200 tiny, rectangular, wooden stools, and three bags of peat moss that hung from the overhead beams. According to one cast member these bags, “were relatively new and their potential had yet to be fully explored.”

Mr. Eckert and the cast and crew arranged the wooden stools into a makeshift platform stage. As an opening exercise, Mr. Eckert instructed the actors to read aloud a partial draft of the play’s script. Roles were assigned and the work was performed with everyone seated on the platform.

Following this reading, Mr. Eckert had the cast switch roles, and recite the text again, this time moving around the set. As the actors performed Mr. Eckert’s work they manipulated the onstage scenery, altered their costumes with chalk, and interacted with one another. Some climbed onto the theater balconies and maneuvered the gigantic marionettes, while others crawled on all fours and rearranged the stools to build walls, pyramids, towers, and cages.

“We have spent a lot of time learning how to utilize our costumes and the set,” said Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14.  “These items’ malleability and impermanence allows us to explore the relationship between our bodies and the physical space and objects around us.”

Ms. Whitehouse noted this unique rehearsal and production process. “Traditional American theater is produced around a pre-made, completed text. In this play, however, action, movement, and activity with costumes and props are as important as the spoken words. Our rehearsals and specifically the way the actors interact with their physical surroundings inform Rinde’s writing.”

Mr. Eckert noted that while “The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy” will be completed and ready for viewers this weekend, following its performance he will continue developing and expanding it as a theater piece.

“Rinde has been great to work with,” said Ms. Sanchez-Eppler. “He allows us to feel comfortable abandoning normal production steps. Rinde’s leadership, dedication, and enthusiasm for his work have brought me to trust in him and his creative process.”

Mr. Eckert’s work at Wesleyan marks his first residency creating a production with solely undergraduates. “The students’ willingness to engage in what can be a frustrating and amorphous process is exceptional,” Rinde said. “They hold a beautiful combination of intelligence and enthusiasm, in addition to a level of sheer bravery. These kids are brave, which is a great thing.”

The show, like its unique production process, is sure to be an unconventional, yet thoroughly engaging and exciting experience. I highly recommend stepping into the world of Rinde Eckert and “The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy” this weekend.