I perform a piece with Butoh artist Maureen Fleming in which I play Philip Glass's Etude No. 5. The performance includes a video of Maureen moving, projected larger-than-life-size on a scrim. Behind the scrim, Maureen performs live. In front of the scrim, onstage, I sit at a piano and play the etude. Maureen made the video first. She started improvising movements and shooting video, with careful, subtle lighting. The movements are slow … [Read more...]
First Glass
Tim Page suggested I play some music by Philip Glass. It was a solo piano arrangement of part of the opera Satyagraha -- Gandhi's final, Act 3 aria. Tim wanted this music for a solo piano CD we were making for BMG's Catalyst label. The arrangement wasn't easy. According to Tim, the pianist Rudolf Firkusny had struggled with it, and given up -- Firkusny thought it was too hard to play! Though the Catalyst recording was never made (some details … [Read more...]
Lights up
So there we are in the theater. The lights coming up just a few seconds too soon and making clearly visible two black-clad dressers meant to be offstage before the light arrives. A little glitch in seamless perfection. And then what? Pretend it didn't happen? Hope no one saw them? Or, on the fly, damage the seamlessness even more and send the dressers out again later on in the show? Most big theater productions have trouble with that kind of … [Read more...]