blind mass orchestra – JOÃO ORECCHIA

GRAPHIC PERFORMANCE SCORES

An ongoing exploration of connecting process, image, sound and performance.

In 2017 I was invited to participate in the inaugural season of The Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg. Founded by William Kentridge the Centre aims to find the less good idea by creating and supporting experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects.

I set out to compose scores for an ensemble of traditional and unusual instrumentation. Reflecting on my process of composing music and my practice in general, I felt I didnʼt want to write melodies on paper and hand them to competent musicians. I wanted to rather curate an ensemble of people who would form a complex mass of personalities, tensions, sonic potential and humour. I wanted to write process.

I started to devise process-based experiments to compose images that could be transposed into musical language. The resulting scores ultimately took the form of videos with a hidden layer of instructions to musicians on how to “read” each score. The video acted as conductor, indicating how and when to start and stop playing, seldom prescribing actual notes. The score would not change with each performance, but the resulting music would change, as an unfolding movement, a collaboration of many parts that make up one mass. I think of this as writing dynamic structures with clear guidelines to movement, tone and relationships, leaving space for (in fact encouraging) individual voice, personality and group dynamic to colour the overall resulting music. Realising that performance is central to both the writing process and the outcome, I began to think of these scores as performance scores.

THE BLIND MASS ORCHESTRA

The first iteration of the performed scores took the form of The Blind Mass Orchestra, an ensemble of 10 Johannesburg based musicians, performing on traditional, non-traditional and invented instruments. The programme included two scores with visual material by William Kentridge resulting from instructions given to him in relation to the experiments.

João Renato Orecchia Zúñiga (Chole Kulcha Harp, analogue synthesizer, electronics), Thandi Ntuli (piano), Tlale Makhene (percussion, voice), Ann Masina (voice), Tsepo Pooe (cello), Waldo Alexander (electric violin), Mpumelelo Mcata (electric guitar), Tshepang Ramoba (electronic drums), Dan Selsick (trombone, EWI electronic wind instrument), Janus Fouché (theremin, artificial intelligence programming) artist | William Kentridge (additional drawings and instructions to the orchestra)