Find a Pretext for Skylarking (Graphic Score)

[Tubadork]

Find a Pretext for Skylarking is a piece written for me by Bil Smith.

It’s a graphic score, which has become a bit of a polarizing compositional method.
LMK if you have questions.

If you look at the score and try to imagine what the markings would sound like in your head, then have a listen and see if I got anywhere near what you thought or had a completely different take on what the markings mean.

I performed the piece with my amplified tuba setup with lots of effects and a DJ controller.
Hope you enjoy it

Here are program notes:
In this solo work for tuba to be performed by Bill Pritchard, I attempt to
problematize what seems to be a pervasive image of musical thought. In the score, I survey those practices in which intellectual resources are most acutely concentrated on the production and exploitation of risk, and to uncover the conceptual underpinnings of methods developed to extract value from the contingency of the performance.

I take the thinking of contingency beyond the ‘compositional casino’ model, and find performers/gamblers (In this case Bill Pritchard) whose experience gives them the authority to considerably refine our understanding of what it means to master chance, who can analyze the score and experience of risk in diverse arenas...those whose work addresses both the desire to confront chance and the desire to tame it by bringing it to order.

Bil Smith

Here is a link to the score:
http://soundmorphology.blogspot.com/201 ... a.html?m=1" target="_blank" target="_blank

YouTube:
https://youtu.be/qUiEHD4ZMUw" target="_blank" target="_blank

#IPlayEastman
#Parkermouthpieces
#Earthquakerdevices
#Robinsonsremedies

[Mike C855B]

Interesting score and performance. While I don't keep up with avant garde (is it still called that?), the scoring and result is definitely evocative of the early synthesizer scoring when I was in school a zillion years ago. Heck, this may well be derivative or even evolutionary of that composition style. Also evocative of a work I'm familiar with but am unable to find any modern reference to, "Concerto for English Horn and Yellow Volkswagen".

One thing that amused me greatly was the presentation on YouTube. Not about the performance, which was fine, but the "you might be interested in..." list off to the side - it was almost entirely "soothing music for relaxation". It couldn't be YouTube's affinity history for me, I don't follow that genre, but somehow they associated the free-form of Skylarking with zen listening. Hardly.