PROGRAM NOTE

Last modified 26 April 2023

PASSAGE 10
Intermedia Performance by Roger Reynolds

PASSAGE 10: "Alliances, John Cage, John Ashbery, Barnett Newman and the Sublime, Toru Takemitsu, the Source of Aesthetic Impact, Intermedia, and Obligation" (2013-2014)

The tenth in the series involved:
Roger Reynolds, Speaker
Paul Hembree, Technical support, image preparation, text recording, spatialization 3 March 2014

PASSAGE is a Performed Event: a non-linear aggregation of original stories, visual images, video clips, live performances, with computer sound spatialization.

Each PASSAGE event is unique, a new combination of text and events depending upon the nature of the venue.

Several years ago, I began a series of presentations that offer a hopefully engaging way of sharing observations, images, sounds, and the unpredictable resonances across them. PASSAGE is not a lecture “about something”, from which an audience member carries away a particular (and uniform) message. It is rather that each individual will make his or her own connections between the elements offered. The intent is associative and inferential, not illustrative or explanatory. My texts, read live and also pre-recorded, are spatialized in real time by an elaborate computer algorithm carefully tuned to allow a textual choreography where lines of thought intersect and challenge one another in novel ways.

The first PASSAGE occurred in the newly opened Experimental Theater at the Conrad Prebys Music Center, 1 December 2009. Subsequent PASSAGE events have occurred in Los Angeles, Buffalo, Cambridge, Ann Arbor, Washington, D.C., at Columbia University, and UCSD. PASSAGE events are not repeated. I am indebted to Paul Hembree and Jaime Oliver for their supportive interaction with me in this ongoing project.

PASSAGE 10 was performed on 3 March 2014 as a part of the "The Good Life" series ("eight of UC San Diego’s finest teachers and scholars share their pursuit of The Good Life") at the Conrad Prebys Concert Hall, Conrad Prebys Music Center, University of California San Diego.

From the Oxford English Dictionary on “passage”: 


The action of going or moving onward, across, or past; movement from one place or point to another, or over or through a space or medium; transit … Migratory flight of a bird. … Transition from one state or condition to another… That by which a person or thing may pass: a road, a path, a route, a channel, etc. A (narrow) way giving access … A thing that passes or takes place; an occurrence; an event; a proceeding … an exchange of words, actions, etc. … A usually short part or section of a book, speech, etc., considered by itself for a specific reason.