By Elizabeth EBJ
Reading Music is an ongoing project of the Ensemble KNM Berlin, and works with a growing collection of compositions that finds different ways to notate sounds and music progressions. Through visual and auditive mediums, they offer the audience a completely unique experience.
In the middle of a crowded park, in front of an outdoor stage, four people placed themselves in front of boxes with wood sticks glued to them. With a comb each, they started passing the comb through the sticks, creating a particular sound. At first, it seemed disconnected from anything besides the noise itself, but after a few seconds, I noticed that there was a rhythm and structure. The performers were looking down at the table filled with instruments and I couldn't help but wonder if there were music sheets for them to follow right there, or if their movements were wonderfully rehearsed to be in such synchronicity. But, of course, they were reading the music.
The cardboard boxes weren't the only instruments, as electronic instruments and a cello were added at different points of the performance, merging with the existing music flawlessly. The ensemble also invited two Mexican artists (Juan Felipe Waller and Carlos Iturralde) to play besides the cellist Cosima Gerhardt and leading woman Ana Maria Rodriguez.
The performance expands the ways both the performers and the audience can understand the interaction between music and its surroundings. It was an enriching experience showing how a simple cardboard box with sticks glued to it can become a range of patterns and sound structures, which in turn become music. The audience was rather impressed by the patterns created by the musicians in the Electronic Table (Mesa Electrónica) in particular.
The experience of the performance Reading Music didn't end there. After the four musicians left the stage, the public was instructed to change location to an indoor saloon where a dance and music performance took place, with the help of a projector, images on the floor instructed four performers (Theodore Flindell, Michael Yokas, Kirstin Maria Pientka and Cosima Gerhardt on their positions and the key and manner they should play their violins, viola, and cello.
The Offering (La Ofrenda) shows us how the body and instruments can work together, following the same instructions, in order to create an atmosphere full of sensory elements for both eyes and ears. The notes and movements' coordinated constructions - the way prolonged notes made circles and the short ones caused abrupt stopping, and so on - was very impressive. Much like the first part of the performance, it showed the audience how one can find music and art outside of traditional musical structures or places.
The performance was a testimony to the art we stumble across in everyday life, and how we should open our eyes and ears to the world around us more.
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