ETHEL's TruckStop™: The Beginning (A note to the audience)

By Neil

WHAT TO EXPECT -

Not just a concert...

We want you, the audience, to experience the whole TruckStop™ process.  We want to share with you the joy and excitement of musical collaboration - what our director, Annie Dorsen, describes as, "that beautiful thing that happens with musicians - the sharing, the concentration on a common project, the 'giving into the center'..."

How will we attempt to bring this to you? We have created a theatrical production - the idea is basically that you have joined us in the studio for a recording session. We're bringing you behind the scenes to experience not just the finished product, but all of the steps in the creative journey. We won't be acting - we will actually be recording.

Our set is a recording studio, and we will have a sound engineer (Greg Tobler) on stage with us. When the red "recording" light goes on, we will play full takes of music that we composed back in June.  We wrote this music as a group (most of it is based on improvisation exercises that Annie led us through). We purposefully built some freedom and spontaneity  into the scores in order to preserve the feeling of "group creativity" that is so central to the TruckStop™ process. The structure and main material of each piece will stay the same from night to night, but aspects of timing and certain musical gestures will be different every night.

During the "recording" moments of the show Kate Howard will be projecting video images onto certain parts of the set. Kate has been recording footage of our working process since March. In Annie's words: "The video acts throughout the piece as a kind of roving eye, noticing moments of fleeting beauty in the workroom. The camera shows us compositions -- interactions between musicians, objects and spaces -- elements and perspectives that would otherwise go unnoticed. By lingering on these images, it encourages us, perhaps, to become aware of the beauty in common work, beauty which can be found in any room anywhere in which people come
together to share something they love."

When the "recording" light goes off, we will be talking, offering constructive criticism to each other, sharing knowledge, jamming, and playing for each other. These moments will offer a real glimpse into what I think of as the "building blocks" of any collaboration - the human relationships.

In the end that's what the show is about - human relationship. Joining in creativity is one of humanity's greatest gifts. Our show is a testament to the power of coming together. You are a crucial part of this - we look forward to seeing you at BAM!

Click here for more info about the show.