On Tuesday, March 25, the lovely French violist Claire Poillion will perform the viola version of The Child, Bringer of Light in Montevideo, Uruguay. Claire and I met at the Banff Centre in 2011. She was living in the Netherlands at the time and now she will be giving my music its South American debut. Crazy how life works these days.

I am excited to revive my older performance art piece, Off the Voice, in a new, more compact version. I will be performing it tomorrow (Saturday, January 18) at the Western Front (303 East 8th Ave, Vancouver) as part of Vancouver Pro Musica’s Electroacoustic Festival.

This piece was inspired by an ordeal that a singer friend of mine went through some time ago. She lost her voice and was almost completely mute for several months. As you can probably imagine, such an experience is especially terrifying for a singer. For me, the work became an exploration of that too frequent inability (or fear) to express ourselves clearly.

Here’s a video recording of my last performance of the work at the Banff Centre in the winter of 2011.

After days of masochistic agony I have finally completed a long-avoided revision of my accordion piece, Light-play through curtain holes, which was originally written in 2010 and premiered by Olivia Steimel. This revision happened at last thanks to the upcoming performance of the work in Vienna as part of the ISCM World New Music Days 2013. The performance will take place on November 11 at 7:30 pm at the Berio-Saal, Konzerthaus, Lothringerstraße 20.

The primary reason I put off this revision for so long was the fact that the original score was done by hand. Just thinking about going through this process all over again made my eyes dry up, my back seize up and my wrists stiffen. Wanting to control every aspect of the layout, I even measured out my own staff lines. It took me days to do just five pages and all I could think was, “thank you to whatever deity might be up there that we have computer software for things like this.”

I love the final result of the hands-on approach; it has a certain density and fluidity hard to replicate in notation software. The lines feel juicier somehow and the possibilities for customization are endless. In this case, the piece seems to look more like it’s supposed to sound.

But, I am eternally grateful that I don’t have to do this with every one of my scores, that this is an aesthetic choice rather than a necessity. I can reserve this labour of love for pieces that would actually gain something from such representation (and I would argue that some wouldn’t).

Thursday is blog day so I’ll tear myself away from the sacred rites of thesis worship to bring you a couple of examples to connect to my previous writing.

Facebook fan pages

Last week in “Why should I ‘like’ you?” I discussed Facebook fan pages and organization profiles. The question was, how does an organization go from simply asking for your ‘like’ to actually engaging you in their little online community. Take a look at Carnegie Hall’s page. It’s an iconic institution so it’s not a surprise that they have over 60,000 ‘likes.’

They are also trying very hard to go beyond that and to give their ‘likers’ a way to get involved. They are currently running a campaign called “30 Day Summer Challenge” where each day they ask you to supply a piece of music that fits some criteria. I missed the beginning of this, but it seems to be a contest. I think the person who answers the most questions will get some sort of prize. This is not the sort of thing to attract a user like me, but I’m probably not the target. The targets are engaging.

Carnegie Hall also posts various bits of archival material to give people glimpses of its past and all the iconic figures who have a history there. Some of their posts are meant to be inspirational in the lofty sense or the cute sense (for example, posting pictures of loving fathers bringing their kids to Carnegie Hall events).

Aided by Facebook’s Timeline layout, this page looks like a scrapbook that users are invited to expand with their own little signatures (as if saying “I’ve been here” on some tree or rock). And while people are browsing this fairly trivial material, reliving their own experiences, they also come across reminders about upcoming events and special programs. Carnegie Hall’s agenda is pushed through quietly, without too much yelling.

Crowdfunding

In “Crowdfunding as a leveraging tool” I touched on the idea of harnessing the power of sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to finance your projects. I recently came across an Indiegogo project started by a Halifax non-profit, Centre for Art Tapes. I am really curious to see how this campaign will do because everything about it tells me that it’s all wrong. It’s missing the point.

1. It’s not raising money for any particular project. Where is my money going exactly? I am selfish and I want my name to be attached to something more glamorous than ‘operational funding.’
2. The perks don’t get you anything that you can’t get outside this campaign: memberships and rental credits. There are only two perks, which might be worth getting through the campaign because they save you about $2.50 from the full price. Every other perk is simply an overpriced membership.
3. When all the perks are handed out, I wonder how much money the campaign will actually bring the organization. They are giving away things that people would pay them for anyway as a regular part of using the Centre. If everyone claims the “Associate” or “Individual Member” perks, the Centre will actually be losing money. Have they done the math? Yes, you will probably always have to use some of the campaign money to pay for the perks, but the trick is to make them something that will naturally come out of the project without costing you extra.

In short, this whole campaign is nothing more than a regular membership and donation drive aimed at people who already use the centre. The whole thing is a perfect example of applying an old mode of thinking to a new tool in the belief that the glamour of the tool itself will bring better results.