[NewMusic] underwhelmed @ Mills

[Phillip Greenlief]

David Slusser <slusser at pixar.com> wrote:    On the way out of tonight's improvisation
concert by Mills music faculty, I asked an
old acquaintance for an opinion. "For all
the wisdom that apparently was on stage,
it could have been more in evidence" was
the reply, or words to that effect. "They're
just green", I said, meaning as a performing
ensemble. I enjoyed it overall - there were
some lovely moments, and resourcefulness
and restraint were well in evidence; except
for restraint in ensemble population. We
got the trusty all-star performance instead
of the kind their students are turning in
around here: ones with more respectful
space. My colleague swore some of the
players never laid out. I countered that I
had made note that most did - just not
long or often enough. My basic formula is:
layout for whatever fraction of the group
you are. If it's a trio, lay out for a third of
the total (projected) time. If it's a quartet,
lay out for a quarter. If it's above five, you
need to lay out for an even longer percentage
- or you'll never get it down to passing duos
and trios. This was a septet, and (Winnant
surprisingly excepted) no one got close to
laying out a 7th of the time (14%). These
people have to relax and trust each other
more.



PG:
I'm not sure "ideas" (such as laying out at a prescribed time frame regarding size of group) always work - you have to actually improvise too. But given the problems with sound in that space, I would have played less....based on the sound of the room. The room, its dubious acoustics and the sound system combined left me with a lot of questions about what folks on stage could hear as opposed to what we could hear in the room (which also depended on where you were sitting in the room).
   
  Lisser is a vastly inferior hall to the main hall and we're stuck with it this year. Oh well. If there was any "failure" on Monday night, it was a failure to deal with the room, or a failure to address the issue of the sound of that particular group in that particular space.  Lisser was not designed to be a performance space for music, and yet the Partch Ensemble (made up of all acoustic instruments BTW) sounded quite nice in that room. I have enjoyed rehearsing with an ensemble of all acoustic instruments over the past few weeks....so it can be done.
   
  Over all I thought the concert was nice...but I was not moved beyond any expectations of that particular performance. As someone else noted (perhaps Damon), this group has no history of playing together - that takes time for any ensemble to develop a group aesthetic. If they were to tour or play a week straight, I'm sure they'd be doing some really wonderful stuff.
   
  Cheers.