MAYBE THROW MOST OF THIS AWAY

Ravel is a project and process that has run the course of this programme and never before has a piece taken me so long to write. I think this is due to the long gaps between workshops and a change of direction for the whole research project part way through.

I began creating it within the frame of my initial direction for this research and then after choosing to change focus from what the material of the project was to how I worked with people, I was able to start again.

The rather surprising upshot of this process of collaboration between not just myself and Zubin Kanga but also Bastard Assignments, is that I need to compose the material more and hammer things down. This means choreographing, notating, and making decisions by myself. Sadly this is because of time contraints and practical issues. It would be easy to not include this project within my research but I find its inclusion interesting because it became clear that more was required of me. My taking the lead as composer and decision-maker is a result of collaboration and conversation.

For the first time, I tried using data empirically to analyse our most recent workshop from January 2020 to see if anything different informationally can be extrapolated. I will discuss this along with my approach and my thoughts on material. Normally I would not discuss material and stylistic decisions because it is not relevant to my research however one project that I was participating in prior to our workshop with Zubin was stimulating and fed my thinking.

It was about an idea of "Divergent Performance" pioneered by Lucia and Paolo, artistic researchers at Orpheus Instituut. It freed me up to consider not just the music of Ravel as a material to deal with and handle, but the actual piano performance of the music of Ravel. The performance as separate but linked and to be problematised. 

Quote a bit about this

Consider what I've written to myself to the right. Here I'm suggesting that that is what we are dealing with, the issue of piano performance rather than piano music.

Whether this necessarily makes sense to anyone else seems unimportant, what should be understood is how this allowed me to zoom out from the keyboard and consider Zubin, the composer, the performer, on stage, with the piano, in time, with Ravel, and all piano performances of all piano music. 

As is my practice now, I recorded the whole workshop session on Ravel. I did an analysis on who spoke during the session and what they said in relation to the work. It should be said that this was at the end of a challenging week in London where the group had been working on a variety of pieces and ideas, some brand new and some well-rehearsed for shows in Oslo and Vilnius. It had been challenging for us and I felt safest using Edward to explore ideas and invite into the conversation with Zubin during my session. This was a shame and just the reality of being in a group. Very little is constant with us because we are always plunged into different situations in new places preparing a different combination of pieces, each being asked different things by each other, it's chaotic. And so it is unsurprising that each of us react in our own ways. The only constant factor is the four of us and that must be tended to and maintained at all cost.

Anyway

My analysis is not exact. It offers clear information however. 

We spent about an hour on Ravel.

The following numeric data has been deduced by listening to the documentation of the session and counting how long each of us spoke and how many time we spoke. 

Zubin spoke 17% of the time, Ed 13%, and I spoke 15% of that time. 

In contract, Caitlin and Tim combined spoke for about 1.5% of the session.

The remainder 50% of the session was filled with moments of silence or piano playing. He was playing the piano alone for most of the time, though for several minutes, the piano was being played by three people at once.

Zubin and I spoke in a more fragmentory way, Zubin with 212 utterances, I had 170 utterances. An utterance might include laughs, agreeing murmurs, fragments of sentences or whole uninterupted statements and sentences.

Ed only had 90 utterances. He said things less often but when he did they were longer, more thought through thoughts. He typically offered ideas.

I speak a little bit longer because I am deciding what happens next in the timeline of the workshop and instruct accordingly, however I consciously made an effort to speak less.

Zubin, spoke most, he often described what was happening, the music, he offers agreement and affirmation. He plays more than he speaks and others are rarely speaking whilst he plays.

These insights were a surprise to me. If I am truly trying to push myself to the back, the erase my voice, then I would be aiming to not be speaking most and it be equal. It would be fair to say that it was balanced but of course as I've shown, it isn't about the ammount of time people spend talking or making sound, it is about what they say.

My initial idea for this piece is that the pianist performs the ballet Daphni et Chloe by Ravel from 1912 ? Zubin's hands would not only play the music but also be the titles roles and move across the piano, the movement and music being one. I explored using a midi keyboard and foot pedal for triggering additional sounds as well.

Again, this is an idea from the first phase of this research project, interlinking movement and sound inextricably. I became less attached to this idea and indeed less attached to using only the music from Daphnis et Chloe and instead asking Zubin what would like to contribute, indeed after asking if he wanted to contribute, he said that he used to know a piano piece by Ravel called Gaspard de la Nuit.

This opened a door to not only consider working with any and all Ravel music but that it is obvious to use what the performer knows, work with their strengths. 

Ahmed Orientations?

It should be said that Gaspard is a very hard piece of music to play. It is also inspired by poetry by

When we got into the room together, Zubin and I were immediately reminded of Anamorfosi by Sciarinno, a brief piano piece from ? that mashes-up Singin in the Rain and j'eau de l'ea to great effect. It seemed possible for us to wield this piece and put it into the mix of Ravel music. To insert a piece into another piece.

I began to discuss where Ravel was in time and that I had been thinking about double-acts and contemporaries like Charlie Chaplin. By this stage Zubin and I had decided to explore makiing this a group piece as opposed to sinmply a solo for him.

This idea quickly snowballed for me in the following weeks into two of us from Bastard Assignments taking on performing as clowns, devising a whole clowing routine and performing that whilst Zubin played. Zubin had agreed that something more of a group piece from me would be an interesting proposition.

The following extract shows the differing natures of our utterances and it becomes clear that there are a plethora of ways into this piece. This becomes a group piece, each member offering ideas and references and potential ways to use the music and us as performers. 

In the video, Ed is talking about how long we wait until it is clearly Ravel or not. In a way this is really an aesthetic conversation.

In this audio excerpt are the two instances when the idea of a Samba arises. It seems to flow out from Zubin playing the opening bar of Gaspard and meets Ed's suggestion of playing without the sustain pedal.  

These were ideas that also arose, not from me, and gave me paths to pursue. 

I joke that Ravel only wrote one melody in his career, but without being reductive, it seems possible to move between Ravel's works like the ones mentioned as well as Piano Concerto for left hand quite easily when the same melody is used like a link.

The collaborative workshop Flow period actually generated the ideas. I think there is a misconception that workshops answer and resolve questions for composers and musicians, rather other people generate ideas by being together. This is experiential and hard to measure.

As Ed and I work with our hands on the table, Caitlin and Tim feel comfortable to chip in with a suggestion to Ed's movement and that he should pull up his sleeve. This is normal for us and is an example of taking ownership behaviour; Caitlin and Tim are on the court and are speaking from that position. It is always a good feeling when someone else is working to further your idea. Friction comes when people are pushing in opposite directions or already have a preconceived notion of where to go.

Sawyer Group FLow quote

excerpt?

Ravel will be the only project to use musical notation, astonishingly. This is because musical material makes up so much of the material. It has to be played and played by a pianist and the material is specific. For a pianist, the most efficient way to do this is with notation, it works here. I'm not wielding it as power, it is all but being requested of me. 

This came to light towards the end of the session where I asked Zubin to freely loop some material. It was clearly quite a lot to ask as I was really seeking something quite specific. 

Again, a system for actually notating what I wanted was suggested and discussed by those in the room. See the example to the right. It was suggested that I use a system of brackets and repeats to get again, a very precise and musical instruction for a musical performer. Ed even took ownership and drew on Zubin's ipad to show an example of how it would work. The reference piece mentioned was for Myra by Cassandra Miller in which a system of coloured brackets are used to denote first, second, and third repeats. 

Georgina Born?