In rehearsal, the performers sit there for a moment and exude nervousness. They are struggling with my music. It is trickier than they realized, and they haven’t had enough time to rehearse together. At the end of this two-week long festival, they are exhausted by the many concerts they have already performed and time is in short supply. I smile. I am easy. “Forget the notes,” I
suggest. I am their supporter and collaborator. They are brilliant musicians. “Just play the music!”
The creation, rehearsal, and performance of music is, for me, a full scale collaboration. Initially, I collaborate with the idea of the new work I am composing – I am both progenerater and investigator – the idea itself is almost a code I have to learn and understand. Often, I collaborate directly with the notes. They are sometimes compliant and easy to keep in place, other times they have to be corralled or even threatened. They can wander off, or even, magically reappear after I have erased them, insisting on their own logic to be.
Next I collaborate with the performers. I have a fluid approach and not interested that they get exactly what I intended. I am excited that they will inhabit my music with their own sense of themselves. My work is shaped by their body and understanding, they put their skin into it. I trust them.
At times I am commissioned to create a work for an individual ensemble. I stalk them a bit, going to their concerts, listening them perform on YouTube and talking to them – what do you like, what are the things you do best as an ensemble or individually? My goal is to create a piece for them that is both mine and theirs, a bit like a beautiful set of clothing, stitched to fit their their particular sound or skills, or, at the very least, using that as a jumping off point.
In the end, the performers collaborate with the audience – the receivers of the music. For me, it is a journey, a traveling through a sonic and emotional landscape. Because music can only experienced through time, the listener perceives the whole only with the aid of memory, a remembrance of beginning. As the performers bend over their music and the audience listens, the energy between them creates the experience.
Collaboration, at its best, is when all participants, artist, performers, and audience, serve what is there; to deeply feel and express the moment. And in that expression is a wonderful transference – not what I am thinking or composing about, but what the performers and listener understands about themselves.