Remote Livestream #5:
Restricted Movement
PROGRAM
Want to read more about the technology involved in these performances?
Check out our new resources page!
And to learn more about the artwork featured during our performance of Gather, check out this page.
Check out our new resources page!
And to learn more about the artwork featured during our performance of Gather, check out this page.
A note: Since standard choral conducting does not work for live remote performance (in fact, it could be detrimental, due to the latency!), we have dubbed the artistic leaders of each piece "semiconductors." While not conducting in the traditional sense, our semiconductors give important cues to help the ensemble stay together, a task made more complicated in this medium. The term "semiconductor" is also a referential nod to the electronic nature of this performance. Thanks to our semiconductors for learning how best to lead an ensemble in this new world!
"I Hope You're Doing Well"
by Dale Trumbore
text by Dale Trumbore
semiconductor: Angela Irving
TEXT
I hope you're doing well
I hope you're safe and happy
I hope you're doing well
I hope you’re healthy and safe
I hope you're happy and well
I hope you're staying sane in these crazy times
I hope you're doing well
I hope you're safe and happy and well
I hope you're doing well
I hope you're healthy and safe
or as much so as possible right now.
"Martyrs"
by Trevor Weston
text by Anonymous; Psalm 39
semiconductor: Joshua Chai
(world premiere)
Years ago, I gave a lecture on early Renaissance music and played "O Sainte Sebastian" by Guillaume Dufay. The words summoned the saint to spare the population from the bubonic plague. What struck me about the piece, beyond its beauty, was the use of the most formal and complex form of choral composition at the time, an isorhythmic motet, to comment on an important contemporary concern. In essence, Dufay used his strongest compositional tools to address an important societal problem.
In the past, I have looked to the Psalms of David when I wanted text to communicate individual human despair. The summer of 2020 combined the COVID plague with numerous examples of African Americans dying as a result of excessive police actions. The fear associated with both issues seemed similar to me; fear that, in the course of going about your day, you could be "caught" by a life-ending intrusion. The inability to breathe is a symptom of both afflictions. The words used too often by those suffering from excessive police force, "I can't breathe," was also the common complaint of those suffering from COVID-19. I inserted this phrase in the excerpt from Psalm 39 that I used for "Martyrs."
The deaths of most people afflicted by both plagues during the summer of 2020 could have been avoided. A similar response to both situations was disbelief of the severity of the problem or a disbelief in the veracity of the problem. For this reason, I consider the now 210,000+ COVID deaths in the US and the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McClain, et al as unnecessary and easily avoided. Martyrs have always been a warning to the living to act before and not after the loss of life. I composed "Martyrs" to honor their lives and hopefully encourage the rest of us to stop future senseless deaths.
TEXT
(Anonymous, from the Isorhythmic Motet by Guillaume Dufay)
O Saint Sebastian
Protect and preserve me
And keep away from me
The evil illness called epidemic.
(from Psalm 39)
I held my tongue, and spake nothing,
I kept silence, but it was pain and grief to me.
My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus
Musing the fire kindled, and at last I spake with my tongue,
"I can't breathe!"
Lord, let me know mine end. Take thy plague
Away from me, make me not a rebuke unto the foolish.
O Saint Sebastian
In their suffering you used to console the martyrs and promise them eternal life and the life due to martyrs.
Amen.
"What Do You Want?"
by Carlos Cordero
text by Carlos Cordero & ensemble
semiconductor: Adrienne Inglis
"What do you want?" is a journey. I am a composer who writes music. But to write these pieces, I often ask myself: What do I want to say? What or who do I want to understand more?
During 2020, I saw how this question haunted me. It was not an easy path to go through but with help, I dared to ask myself. I didn't know the answers until I asked this question several times. I am still in this process, getting awesome and crazy answers, like creating this piece.
WDYW is a piece for singers to explore the act of saying what is on their mind. I believe that once they go through the rehearsal or performance of this piece, each person will have a realization or feel more passionately about something they already knew. If we are brave enough to speak up and say what we want, we will ultimately hear it ourselves (plus, it helps that this piece forms a dense texture so not all the verbs, phrases, wishes, thoughts will be heard).
The only rule I hope for this piece is that sound never stops until the end, where singers will ask the question once more to keep the thought rolling until the next performance (which could be by the same choir or an entirely new part of the world). I hope this piece teaches us more about ourselves and the people around us. I am, after all, in choral music because of the connection with others.
TEXT
I want to (verb)
I want to (phrase)
I want to (thought)
I want to (wish)
I want to (longer phrase)
I want to (full phrase)
I want to (action)
I want to (verb)
What do you want?
"Gather"
by Scott Gendel
poem by Katrin Talbot
semiconductor: Brian Mountford
special guests: Psophonia Dance Company
I wrote “Gather” this past spring because, like so many of my friends and colleagues in this COVID-19 pandemic, I deeply miss choral singing, and especially the vulnerability and group bonding that happens when people join their voices in chorus. I knew it would be impossible to perform choral music in a traditional sense at that moment, but wanted to explore how singers could still connect by making music together from our homes. At the time of this piece’s composition (and still today, for most people without complex setups) there was no possibility of singers hearing each other in real time or being able to sync up their performances, which got me excited about the idea of writing a piece that was aleatoric in nature, in which each singer performed as if it were a solo performance & then magical things happened when those out-of-sync solos combined via the internet.
Then, when I read my friend Katrin Talbot’s brief pandemic poem “Gather,” it affected me so strongly, and I knew it would be perfect for such a piece. Katrin imagines, in a dream, that we’re all in a room together, feeling “nothing grand,” but simply that warmth of sharing basic experiences with others. So I conceived of my piece “Gather” as a musical dream of sorts. I recorded a backing track on my home piano (out-of-tune notes and all), adding various synthesizers & found sounds as a dreamscape, supporting and surrounding each singer’s musical choices.
And as each singer navigates that dream from their own recording space, a complex musical fabric emerges, all those dreams joining into one giant gesture of longing for connection, one slow reaching out to hold the hand of another human being. At one point, I can’t resist getting in on the action myself, and I wave to all of the other singers from my tree. And so, “Gather” is about connection when connection seems impossible, connection by reaching out into the dark and being pleasantly surprised when someone else is there, connection by accident, human connection as something indomitable that can’t be stopped no matter what happens in the world.
TEXT
I dreamt we could all stand together
nothing grand, just watching something
a concert, a lecture, a sunset
and then I woke to the calling of the crows
Today I will wave to you from my tree
And maybe we can sing
"Fish Bowl"
by Bonnie Bogovich
text by Bonnie Bogovich
Copyright BlackCatBonifide LLC 2020
semiconductor: Timothy Brown
(world premiere)
Quarantine/COVID 2020 has been rough on many of us, obviously, and our remote concerts have been full of various supportive and contemplative topics related to our situation. As a new member to the ensemble, this being my second concert with C4, I wanted to contribute something to fit this continuing theme, but with my own spin on it. I also wanted to provide a visual element, to try out some mixed media into the concert, via puppets or artwork that the performers could add into their feeds. My day job is working as a sound designer and voice artist for games and educational content, much of which is geared towards children. My parents often describe me as "a Muppet" and I have always been a fan of shows like Sesame Street that can break down difficult topics for younger minds to understand and discuss. Puppetry fit in super well with this idea, while also adding the challenge for me to create a puppet design that the performers could print out easily at home to create, basic choreography that would read well on the Zoom stream, while...still "keeping things simple."
Having attended countless Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts and other such video chat meetings over the last 6 years, and with a cure or vaccine to the virus being very far away, I decided to focus on that as the topic. Looking at our sea of faces, and discussing with team members and friends, I felt that our lives, as seen by others on the screen, and ourselves, started to resemble that of an animal in a pet shop. I started writing two ideas, one with us being in fish bowls, and one involving bird cages, but the fish bowl felt like a much better fit. A bird can leave it's cage, and fly away, and be happy. However, a fish, if it leaves the safety of its bowl, cannot survive without water...darkly compared to the risk of us going outside and possibly being infected while we're on stay-at-home alert. And, going back to Sesame Street, I wanted the song to feel unthreatening, and "simple," so that a younger person would still enjoy it. The tempo would also be constant, for simplicity and to make rehearsal and performance on this streaming medium easier, and also to symbolize a ticking clock, the never ending schedule we are describing in the song.
The song is arranged in a way to first have us look at a fish describing its surroundings, the container it is in, and the repetitive nature of what it does each day; wake up, swim around, wave at "Steve the Submarine Man," the "castle" at the center. The biggest action that day is remembering to eat, and then we continue as before. Verse two introduces human voices and the things we all do everyday while stuck at home; go online, check your email, miss your friends, and so forth. The final portion of the song we overlap the lives of the fish and the humans, to show the similarities. We wake up, walk to the coffee machine, wave at the "Submarine Steves" in our house, which may be our pets, our spouses, our children, i.e. those beings we can physically talk to in our home every day, and we go online and, if scheduled properly, can see others peeking out from their bowls to make contact in whichever way we can. We may be restricted to our "bowls" right now, but thanks to technology, at least we can peer out and wave at each other, and get small glimpses into each other's bowls for a while...and as travel is off for a while, our schedules are more laxed. Doesn't take much to reach out to a friend online. Remember, "we're only a 'ping' away!"
- Bonnie Bogovich
TEXT
Every day I wake and I look around.
Say "hello" to Steve, the submarine man,
He guards the castle at the center of my bowl.
The gravel always looks the same...
Guess my place must seem very odd to you
But it's where I live
Where I'll have to stay for now
I press my eye against the glass of my bowl.
It's so darn lonely living in a fish bowl...
In a fish bowl...
Castles, gravel, Submarine Steve...
It's always the same...
Swim, swim, swimming in circles.
An endless race,
that resets the course each day...
Oh yay, it's feeding time!
(Melodic feeding noises)
Swim, swim, swim.
Swim, swim, swim...
Every day we wake and we look around,
take a shower, make some coffee and go online.
Every day I stare at the news and sigh. (I'm online)
How many days has it been since I've seen my friends?
I log in to chat and there you are. (I miss my friends)
Just your head and shoulders but it's you in your world.
(In your square in your world)
Every day we wake and we look around...
It's like we all are living in a fish bowl,
In a fish bowl...
Face chats, emails, always lagging,
It's hard to stay sane.
Swim, swim, swimming in circles.
At least we all know,
we're all just a ping away...
Until it's safe out there in here I'll stay
This is fine...
My bowl is fine....
My castle is fine...
And Steve is fine...
We're fine.
We're fine.
We are fine (fine, fine, fine)
Everything is fine (How are you, we hope you)
We hope you are fine!
by Dale Trumbore
text by Dale Trumbore
semiconductor: Angela Irving
TEXT
I hope you're doing well
I hope you're safe and happy
I hope you're doing well
I hope you’re healthy and safe
I hope you're happy and well
I hope you're staying sane in these crazy times
I hope you're doing well
I hope you're safe and happy and well
I hope you're doing well
I hope you're healthy and safe
or as much so as possible right now.
"Martyrs"
by Trevor Weston
text by Anonymous; Psalm 39
semiconductor: Joshua Chai
(world premiere)
Years ago, I gave a lecture on early Renaissance music and played "O Sainte Sebastian" by Guillaume Dufay. The words summoned the saint to spare the population from the bubonic plague. What struck me about the piece, beyond its beauty, was the use of the most formal and complex form of choral composition at the time, an isorhythmic motet, to comment on an important contemporary concern. In essence, Dufay used his strongest compositional tools to address an important societal problem.
In the past, I have looked to the Psalms of David when I wanted text to communicate individual human despair. The summer of 2020 combined the COVID plague with numerous examples of African Americans dying as a result of excessive police actions. The fear associated with both issues seemed similar to me; fear that, in the course of going about your day, you could be "caught" by a life-ending intrusion. The inability to breathe is a symptom of both afflictions. The words used too often by those suffering from excessive police force, "I can't breathe," was also the common complaint of those suffering from COVID-19. I inserted this phrase in the excerpt from Psalm 39 that I used for "Martyrs."
The deaths of most people afflicted by both plagues during the summer of 2020 could have been avoided. A similar response to both situations was disbelief of the severity of the problem or a disbelief in the veracity of the problem. For this reason, I consider the now 210,000+ COVID deaths in the US and the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McClain, et al as unnecessary and easily avoided. Martyrs have always been a warning to the living to act before and not after the loss of life. I composed "Martyrs" to honor their lives and hopefully encourage the rest of us to stop future senseless deaths.
TEXT
(Anonymous, from the Isorhythmic Motet by Guillaume Dufay)
O Saint Sebastian
Protect and preserve me
And keep away from me
The evil illness called epidemic.
(from Psalm 39)
I held my tongue, and spake nothing,
I kept silence, but it was pain and grief to me.
My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus
Musing the fire kindled, and at last I spake with my tongue,
"I can't breathe!"
Lord, let me know mine end. Take thy plague
Away from me, make me not a rebuke unto the foolish.
O Saint Sebastian
In their suffering you used to console the martyrs and promise them eternal life and the life due to martyrs.
Amen.
"What Do You Want?"
by Carlos Cordero
text by Carlos Cordero & ensemble
semiconductor: Adrienne Inglis
"What do you want?" is a journey. I am a composer who writes music. But to write these pieces, I often ask myself: What do I want to say? What or who do I want to understand more?
During 2020, I saw how this question haunted me. It was not an easy path to go through but with help, I dared to ask myself. I didn't know the answers until I asked this question several times. I am still in this process, getting awesome and crazy answers, like creating this piece.
WDYW is a piece for singers to explore the act of saying what is on their mind. I believe that once they go through the rehearsal or performance of this piece, each person will have a realization or feel more passionately about something they already knew. If we are brave enough to speak up and say what we want, we will ultimately hear it ourselves (plus, it helps that this piece forms a dense texture so not all the verbs, phrases, wishes, thoughts will be heard).
The only rule I hope for this piece is that sound never stops until the end, where singers will ask the question once more to keep the thought rolling until the next performance (which could be by the same choir or an entirely new part of the world). I hope this piece teaches us more about ourselves and the people around us. I am, after all, in choral music because of the connection with others.
TEXT
I want to (verb)
I want to (phrase)
I want to (thought)
I want to (wish)
I want to (longer phrase)
I want to (full phrase)
I want to (action)
I want to (verb)
What do you want?
"Gather"
by Scott Gendel
poem by Katrin Talbot
semiconductor: Brian Mountford
special guests: Psophonia Dance Company
I wrote “Gather” this past spring because, like so many of my friends and colleagues in this COVID-19 pandemic, I deeply miss choral singing, and especially the vulnerability and group bonding that happens when people join their voices in chorus. I knew it would be impossible to perform choral music in a traditional sense at that moment, but wanted to explore how singers could still connect by making music together from our homes. At the time of this piece’s composition (and still today, for most people without complex setups) there was no possibility of singers hearing each other in real time or being able to sync up their performances, which got me excited about the idea of writing a piece that was aleatoric in nature, in which each singer performed as if it were a solo performance & then magical things happened when those out-of-sync solos combined via the internet.
Then, when I read my friend Katrin Talbot’s brief pandemic poem “Gather,” it affected me so strongly, and I knew it would be perfect for such a piece. Katrin imagines, in a dream, that we’re all in a room together, feeling “nothing grand,” but simply that warmth of sharing basic experiences with others. So I conceived of my piece “Gather” as a musical dream of sorts. I recorded a backing track on my home piano (out-of-tune notes and all), adding various synthesizers & found sounds as a dreamscape, supporting and surrounding each singer’s musical choices.
And as each singer navigates that dream from their own recording space, a complex musical fabric emerges, all those dreams joining into one giant gesture of longing for connection, one slow reaching out to hold the hand of another human being. At one point, I can’t resist getting in on the action myself, and I wave to all of the other singers from my tree. And so, “Gather” is about connection when connection seems impossible, connection by reaching out into the dark and being pleasantly surprised when someone else is there, connection by accident, human connection as something indomitable that can’t be stopped no matter what happens in the world.
TEXT
I dreamt we could all stand together
nothing grand, just watching something
a concert, a lecture, a sunset
and then I woke to the calling of the crows
Today I will wave to you from my tree
And maybe we can sing
"Fish Bowl"
by Bonnie Bogovich
text by Bonnie Bogovich
Copyright BlackCatBonifide LLC 2020
semiconductor: Timothy Brown
(world premiere)
Quarantine/COVID 2020 has been rough on many of us, obviously, and our remote concerts have been full of various supportive and contemplative topics related to our situation. As a new member to the ensemble, this being my second concert with C4, I wanted to contribute something to fit this continuing theme, but with my own spin on it. I also wanted to provide a visual element, to try out some mixed media into the concert, via puppets or artwork that the performers could add into their feeds. My day job is working as a sound designer and voice artist for games and educational content, much of which is geared towards children. My parents often describe me as "a Muppet" and I have always been a fan of shows like Sesame Street that can break down difficult topics for younger minds to understand and discuss. Puppetry fit in super well with this idea, while also adding the challenge for me to create a puppet design that the performers could print out easily at home to create, basic choreography that would read well on the Zoom stream, while...still "keeping things simple."
Having attended countless Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts and other such video chat meetings over the last 6 years, and with a cure or vaccine to the virus being very far away, I decided to focus on that as the topic. Looking at our sea of faces, and discussing with team members and friends, I felt that our lives, as seen by others on the screen, and ourselves, started to resemble that of an animal in a pet shop. I started writing two ideas, one with us being in fish bowls, and one involving bird cages, but the fish bowl felt like a much better fit. A bird can leave it's cage, and fly away, and be happy. However, a fish, if it leaves the safety of its bowl, cannot survive without water...darkly compared to the risk of us going outside and possibly being infected while we're on stay-at-home alert. And, going back to Sesame Street, I wanted the song to feel unthreatening, and "simple," so that a younger person would still enjoy it. The tempo would also be constant, for simplicity and to make rehearsal and performance on this streaming medium easier, and also to symbolize a ticking clock, the never ending schedule we are describing in the song.
The song is arranged in a way to first have us look at a fish describing its surroundings, the container it is in, and the repetitive nature of what it does each day; wake up, swim around, wave at "Steve the Submarine Man," the "castle" at the center. The biggest action that day is remembering to eat, and then we continue as before. Verse two introduces human voices and the things we all do everyday while stuck at home; go online, check your email, miss your friends, and so forth. The final portion of the song we overlap the lives of the fish and the humans, to show the similarities. We wake up, walk to the coffee machine, wave at the "Submarine Steves" in our house, which may be our pets, our spouses, our children, i.e. those beings we can physically talk to in our home every day, and we go online and, if scheduled properly, can see others peeking out from their bowls to make contact in whichever way we can. We may be restricted to our "bowls" right now, but thanks to technology, at least we can peer out and wave at each other, and get small glimpses into each other's bowls for a while...and as travel is off for a while, our schedules are more laxed. Doesn't take much to reach out to a friend online. Remember, "we're only a 'ping' away!"
- Bonnie Bogovich
TEXT
Every day I wake and I look around.
Say "hello" to Steve, the submarine man,
He guards the castle at the center of my bowl.
The gravel always looks the same...
Guess my place must seem very odd to you
But it's where I live
Where I'll have to stay for now
I press my eye against the glass of my bowl.
It's so darn lonely living in a fish bowl...
In a fish bowl...
Castles, gravel, Submarine Steve...
It's always the same...
Swim, swim, swimming in circles.
An endless race,
that resets the course each day...
Oh yay, it's feeding time!
(Melodic feeding noises)
Swim, swim, swim.
Swim, swim, swim...
Every day we wake and we look around,
take a shower, make some coffee and go online.
Every day I stare at the news and sigh. (I'm online)
How many days has it been since I've seen my friends?
I log in to chat and there you are. (I miss my friends)
Just your head and shoulders but it's you in your world.
(In your square in your world)
Every day we wake and we look around...
It's like we all are living in a fish bowl,
In a fish bowl...
Face chats, emails, always lagging,
It's hard to stay sane.
Swim, swim, swimming in circles.
At least we all know,
we're all just a ping away...
Until it's safe out there in here I'll stay
This is fine...
My bowl is fine....
My castle is fine...
And Steve is fine...
We're fine.
We're fine.
We are fine (fine, fine, fine)
Everything is fine (How are you, we hope you)
We hope you are fine!
About Trevor Weston"I have always gravitated to music that mesmerizes and entrances its listeners by creating a sense of suspended reality. Music can be a portal to a parallel existence where our experiences, thoughts, and ideas are communicated through the more impactful abstract nature of aural stimuli. Music allows us to retreat from the mundane to reflect more profoundly on our existence. My intention is to create music that is transformative regardless of instrumentation or style."
- Trevor Weston |
About Psophonia Dance Company of HoustonPSOPHONIA Dance Company is dedicated to creating and presenting dances that entertain, intrigue, educate and inspire learning through collaboration and interaction with artists. Under the leadership of Sophia L. Torres, Psophonia is known for its athleticism, unique interpretation of everyday objects, and artistry. Over the past few years, PDC has had the privilege of collaborating with AURA Contemporary Ensemble under the leadership of Dr. Rob Smith. Our most recent collaborations include Memory Web and Colony both evening length, interdisciplinary works funded from grants received from Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at University of Houston and presented at the MATCH. Psophonia has worked intimately with Austin ensemble, Chaski producing Infinite Shape of Creatures and The Book of Goddesses which were presented in Houston, Austin, Corpus Christi and Georgetown. We are grateful to present Gather with C4 Ensemble.
|
C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective Members & Guests Performing:
Daniel Andor-Ardó
Stephanie K. Andrews (Inversion Ensemble)
Bonnie Bogovich (Inversion Ensemble)
Colin Britt (C4 alum)
Timothy Brown
Joshua Chai (Inversion Ensemble)
Olivia Cheeseman (Inversion Ensemble)
Mario Gullo
Adrienne Inglis (Inversion Ensemble)
Angela Irving (Inversion Ensemble)
Jamie Klenetsky Fay
Brian Mountford
Leonore Nelson
Maureen Broy Papovich (Inversion Ensemble)
David See
Karen Siegel
Perry Townsend
Psophonia Dance Company of Houston Members Performing:
Allyson Loving
Tory Pierce
Lysette Portano
Elyssa Vega
Lizzy Woodson
Daniel Andor-Ardó
Stephanie K. Andrews (Inversion Ensemble)
Bonnie Bogovich (Inversion Ensemble)
Colin Britt (C4 alum)
Timothy Brown
Joshua Chai (Inversion Ensemble)
Olivia Cheeseman (Inversion Ensemble)
Mario Gullo
Adrienne Inglis (Inversion Ensemble)
Angela Irving (Inversion Ensemble)
Jamie Klenetsky Fay
Brian Mountford
Leonore Nelson
Maureen Broy Papovich (Inversion Ensemble)
David See
Karen Siegel
Perry Townsend
Psophonia Dance Company of Houston Members Performing:
Allyson Loving
Tory Pierce
Lysette Portano
Elyssa Vega
Lizzy Woodson
Feel like supporting C4's ongoing exploration of live remote choral performance? Our Venmo virtual tip jar can be found at @c4ensemble! (Donations can also be made via credit card through our website, as well as through PayPal at [email protected].)
Thank you for your support!
Thank you for your support!
