Music of North Side Spaces Recap

It's over! Music of North Side Spaces was a great success, and a personal triumph. If you missed it, here's a play-by-play of what happened, with some pho-toes to accompa-knee your reading. Tee hee.

New Hazlett Theater
The tour began at the New Hazlett Theater, with a ‘tour guide’ presentation by Danny Bracken, a coworker at Mattress Factory. The first piece of the tour was inspired by the New Hazlett building itself, which was built as Andrew Carnegie’s first library of Pittsburgh. All words in the piece came directly from Andrew Carnegie's writings, spoken/sung by four singers up on the balcony of the lobby. Three percussionists were stationed at typewriters, books, and rhythmically tearing papers. Much to the tour’s delight, a passing thunderstorm ended just as the tour headed outside.

Children’s Museum
At the Children's Museum/old Buhl Planetarium, we moved portable sound equipment outside for a performance inspired by old historical exhibit titles from the Planetarium and texts carved on the side of the building. For there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars/For one star differeth from another start in glory. Beautiful! Three singers (also known as the band Wungsten, I don't know if you know them but you should, they're huge in Japan) played glockenspiels and electric bass while singing. One additional percussionist was placed about 50 feet away, playing antiphonal chimes, like distant stars and galaxies.

Aviary/Allegheny Commons
Two instrumentalists played birdsong-inspired improvisations near the Aviary. The audience walked along the trail through the park and was delighted to find the musicians located not on the ground but nestled up in the trees! I think this was a lot of people's favorite piece, short but very effective in presentation. It was not easy trying to stay up on those tree limbs, or so I heard from B and K playing soprano sax and flute. Sorry 'bout that. Thank goodness I didn't write the piece for instruments any bigger.

Lake Elizabeth
A brass quintet played at Lake Elizabeth, complete with frolicking kayakers in conjunction with Venture Outdoors' free kayaking program.The quintet began their music near the War Memorial, but marched while playing to the island of the lake, with one musician entering the water to play! I really wanted all the musicians to trudge down into the water, but wouldn't you know, over the course of the last couple months, all this algae grew on the stones in the "lake" (more like a man-made pond) that wasn't there when I tested out the space. Luckily one player had enough time in his music to hop down, and his two sons were kayaking right by him. It was a pretty great sight. The music was inspired by a music pavilion in North Park, torn down after the early 1900's. I also borrowed an idea from Pittsburgh ethnic groups who used to form small bands and would play Eastern European folk music in the park. The brass quintet had melodies of Czech folk songs and polkas as well as a snippet of chords from Billy Strayhorn's jazz songs. (We're missing our second trumpeter in this photo, but we do get more kayaks in the frame).

Mattress Factory
The final performance at Mattress Factory was constructed like one of the museum’s multimedia installations, and the music was an abstract tour of the collection. MF staff helped me create a small stage with colored lighting and amazing textured fabric, and I placed several ladders and musical instruments around the floor to interact with. I sang the vocal part of the work, but two singers and four improvisers also played found instruments and enthusiastically recited lists of art objects in the museum (One thousand bars of pink soap! Liquid gardenia scent! Medieval battle reenactors! Salt!). This piece finally let me make my dream of singing quasi-pop music (with an experimental twist) with a backing string quartet...pretty glamorous. 'Course, I also got to run up ladders, play a music box, a melodica, and dance around. By the time the tour reached Mattress Factory, we had a hundred people in the audience, much more than I ever anticipated! It was also about 90 degrees that day and I sweated through several shirts...but the audience seemed content, even through the heat.

I certainly learned a lot from Music of North Side Spaces, especially about grant-writing, budget-planning, rehearsal planning, and logistics. A Memo to Me: always hire anyone you want to document the work, it will be totally worth shelling out the cash and not having to worry about getting good photos or video. It was a great project, and I should have a CD release of some of the music at some point. Now I can't wait for working in Iceland, where culture is so intertwined with nature that you can't possibly walk outside without being affected by the landscape, right in your backyard.

(all photo credits: Magali Duzant.)

Post-Gazette Writeup of North Side Spaces

Sunday's music event got some great press in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, hopefully it will get some interested folks to hear it! Many thanks to Diana for interviewing me and coming to hear the brass quintet rehearse.
There's also a video of the quintet, check it out!

Musicians to add notes to North Side tour sites

Friday, June 25, 2010

By Diana Nelson Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

If Lake Elizabeth were music, what might it sound like?

A free tour Sunday of four North Side places will offer Nathan Hall's interpretation of what each site would be if it were a piece of music.

The tour, from 3 to 4 p.m., begins at the New Hazlett Theater and is open to the public.

A different group of musicians will play at each of the sites -- the New Hazlett, the Children's Museum, Allegheny Commons Park and the Mattress Factory -- while tourists move from one to the next.

Mr. Hall had vied for a Charm Bracelet microgrant to present this musical itinerary "outside the composition box."

"I saw the opportunity to tie all these sites together" through music and "make it interactive. Usually, the audience is removed from the musicians, but this will bring them up close and personal."

The tour venues are among those in a "Charm Bracelet" of cultural sites on the North Side; Charm Bracelet became a brand in 2007.

"It is a network of cultural, educational and recreational organizations [collaborating on] projects that come together outside our walls and through the neighborhood to foster an attractive North Side," said Chris Siefert, deputy director of the Children's Museum.

The Grable Foundation granted the bulk of funding for this round of seven Charm Bracelet microgrants. The $6,700 grant pays the 20 musicians and for technical support.

The next round of funding will be announced in the fall for small projects that are art- and design-oriented, said Mr. Siefert. The grants of $500 to $10,000 will be funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Mr. Siefert called Music of North Side Spaces "an original idea that touched on a few different layers. It really excited reviewers in our stakeholder group, mostly for its interpretation, making the streets lively. These are what we call everyday space, places people encounter by walking around or getting off a bus."

Last Sunday, amid kayak rentals and bouncing dogs, a brass quintet assembled beside Lake Elizabeth in Allegheny Commons Park to rehearse. The group began at the Civil War Memorial and paraded across a bridge onto the lake's island, each horn making punctuations of sound, both abstract and plaintive. Trumpeter Josh Boudreau popped down into the water and stood, calf deep, as the others stood near the water as it lapped over a slope of Belgian blocks.

"Each composition is based on the architecture and the history of the site," said Mr. Hall, 27, who works as the office manager at the Mattress Factory and has a master's degree in music composition from Carnegie Mellon University. "The inspiration at Lake Elizabeth is that there used to be a music pavilion."

At the New Hazlett, seven musicians -- vocalists and percussionists -- will present a piece inspired by the fact that the building shares space with what was Andrew Carnegie's second oldest library. The percussionists will be playing typewriters.

At the Children's Museum, three glockenspiels, singers and a bass guitar will provide music inspired by the science exhibits that once were at the Buhl Planetarium on the same site.

A flutist and soprano saxophonist will play along the walkway leading toward the lake. To signify the proximity to the National Aviary, the duo will play music adapted from a 19th-century transcription of bird song.

"When the flute plays at a certain register, birds are responsive," said Mr. Hall.

A string quartet, singers and improvisors at the Mattress Factory will present a work inspired by a piece John Cage performed at the art museum in 1990.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10176/1068067-388.stm#ixzz0ruKMHwIr

Music of North Side Spaces Update

Music of North Side Spaces (MoNSS from here on out) is just over three weeks away. My day-job's insane fundraiser, the Urban Garden Party, is just over two weeks away, and the combination of these two things is really intense! I feel like I could be working full-time on a project like MoNSS and it still wouldn't be up to my level of satisfaction, and I'm already working overtime at the museum preparing for the Garden Party. I had a really sleepless night the other night thinking about planning for MoNSS as my mind kept racing with thoughts like "He needs to take the music stand here and what if it thunderstorms but what about costumes will they get up in the trees do I need to hire someone else I don't have a photographer yet and we need one more rehearsal but ugh I hate scheduling I forgot about the crotales".

I should have requested more money from the grant that funded me, but as this is my first grant, I haven't had enough experience yet to know about all of the back-work logistical things that have to happen with a multi-site performance. Luckily I have enough support from friends and colleagues that I think no matter what happens it will be successful. So what if I didn't think of putting in the budget some money for ten yards of fabric, I can do without it. I didn't have to rent a sound system, therefore I can hire a professional photographer, those kinds of things. It will still be a cool event, with brand-new music written for it, friends and family there to support everyone, and that kind of event hasn't happened in that area before. Please don't thunderstorm. I really didn't prepare for that kind of thing. Rain, okay.

So far for MoNSS we've recorded about 50% of the music in the studio (I want to have a non-live version of things to possibly put out an album of the works, or at least for posterity), and two big pieces are all set and ready to go. This leaves a piece for the New Hazlett Theatre (about Andrew Carnegie) to rehearse and polish up, a brass quintet piece, and a string quartet + vocals piece yet to be heard, recorded, or rehearsed. I'm so glad I made a calendar in advance to help me keep a basic schedule! I can just barely wrap my brain around who's supposed to be where, who's rehearsing at what time, are there enough music stands, does everyone have their music, let alone think about performing in some of the pieces.

I think some of the things are going to be even better than I expected, too! The birdsongs piece in the park will be awesome, and in our dress rehearsal, the flutist mesmerized a squirrel with her trill stylings. The musical typewriters I have planned are going to sound really good, and I think there will be a great-looking 'installation' of lights, seating, and furniture for the Mattress Factory piece.

(Photo, right: mesmerized squirrel.)

In other news, Eyafjallajökull has stopped erupting, much to the pleasure of my impending plane ticket to Iceland on 30 August.

North Side updates, Icelandic, estate sale

I finally got my park permit for Music of Northside Spaces–now I can perform music there without the cops busting up my classical-music nonprofit grant proposal. Though it would be quite the exciting event to have police sirens pull up to my brass quintet and haul everyone away! It would be as if I planned the whole thing. Except the event would have an abrupt premature ending.

Promo image for Music of North Side Spaces has arrived- designed by the fabulous Shannon Knepper at War Admiral Press.

I've been practicing my Icelandic and making a million errors, but I can now form basic sentences! I'm working on past tense verbs. This week I had a practice conversation with my teacher in past tense, and I attempted to tell my teacher about Betty White's recent performances on SNL. However, it came across sounding more like: "Yesterday, I saw a film about an actress. Her name was Betty White. She sang and played. She was very funny and good-looking. My friends laughed. I walked to my friend's house and watched the TV". I don't really know that that quite conveys the event, but it had sentences in it! It included the words í gær, sjónvarpinu, leikona, husið, myndaleg. Though probably some of those declensions were wrong at the time, too. Hey, I'm trying, Icelandic is HRAD (sic- that's just 'hard' misspelled).

I'm looking to sell some of my things before I move in August, and I think it's time that I get stuff on craigslist. Ugh. I've been very happy with loveseat that I got a few years ago, but who needs to worry about furniture when you may be moving across the country in two different directions, twice in the next 14 months? So that's the biggest item that should go. I'd rather become minimalist again. A minimalist who happens to have a big CD and art book collection. I'm also hoping to have a goodbye concert + Icelandic fundraiser that might resemble a silent auction or estate sale in my apartment. Good idea? It's slightly more interesting and cost-effective than a yard sale. Or will people try to buy the things that I need? Or, will people feel awkward about buying my possessions? I think I might tag everything I want to sell and then it can be taken with you at the end of the night. There will even be free stuff too! Plus, you get a cheap concert out of it, right in my living room.

Typewriter + Glockenspiel

A second sneak peek into two other elements of 'Music of North Side Spaces' in June. Glockenspiels and musical typewriters! This particular typewriter, on loan, has a sideways 'T' and is loved all the more for it. And it still has working ribbon inside of it! Those machines are fantastically indestructible.