PROGRAM NOTE

Last modified 27 April 2023

PASSAGE 11
Intermedia Performance by Roger Reynolds

PASSAGE 11: "Collaboration, Cage, Takemitsu, Xenakis, The Sublime, and Obligation" (2016)

The eleventh in the series involved:
Roger Reynolds, Speaker
Johannes Regnier and Paul Hembree, Technical support
With the Arditti String Quartet (performing three movements from not forgottenand Irvine Arditti performing the 3^rd cadenza from Aspiration)
3 August 2016

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 11 was performed on 3 August 2016 at Darmstadt, Germany, 70th Anniversary Celebration.

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.

– Roger Reynolds