A COVID OPERA
As the outlook worsened for some instrumental students to come in, we were lucky that the 5 singers in the group would be all out of quarantine and available a week before the first official day of the project. Since no live singing was allowed at all, I felt we had to think of a creative workaround rather than let the singers simply play a percussive instrument in the project. So I was able to meet with them a week ahead and have a brainstroming session about their possibilities. During the brainstorm session a couple of nice ideas came up. By including a large screen on stage during the performance it would be possible to combine pre-recorded video material of the singers actually singing, with them enacting their roles, or doing something contrasting themselves. We agreed that they would be starting as a group to develop ideas and meet 3 days later to discuss them.
As the plans of the singers developed, final decisions had to be made about the technical infrastructure and spaces that would be used for the performance. The choice was made to concentrate all action on the stage of the Concert Hall, with a large screen in the mid-back part of the stage. This way pre-recorded video, distance-playing and live music making could be combined, and the live-streaming team could simply use the 3 cameras that were already installed in the hall.
Soon the singers came with their first ideas for an operatic section centered around the covid situation. They would each create a scene with themselves singing on the large screen (pre-recorded) while acting out parts of the text live on stage. In the scenes they intended to express feelings of isolation, boredom, fear, the impact of the pandemic and controversies in the news. After talking it through they decided also to include differnet languages such as Korean, Malay, Chinese and English. It is intersting to note how unusual this way of working is; they did not know yet which instrumentalists they would be playing with, even less what it would be. So their video materials were sketches, open to change once the collaborative process started. During the process they decided to add subtitles on the large screen which could be read by the audience of the live-stream.
FIRST YEAR CREATIVE PROJECT 2020
The creative project for all freshmen in 2020 was a completely different experience from the years before. Due to the uncertain COVID situation in Singapore and the rest of the world it was not clear whether the international students would be able to arrive in time for the orientation period of NUS, or even for the start of the semester. As the situation evolved and many countries including Singapore started imposing travel restrictions and quarantine rules, the first thought was to move the entire project online. But how would that work? I did not have the best experiences with the online teaching of my improvisation groups in Europe, since exactly the classes that require playing together and deep listening were the ones suffering the most. As we were moving into July with less than a month to go it became urgent to make decisions.
THE ORIENTATION AND CREATIVE PROJECT GROUPS
Where in previous years I used to lead the creative project together with Ty Constant, it was decided this year that we would extend the coaching and involve a group of younger colleagues and artist fellows. This way I could share my experiences and let the younger colleagues gain experience for future projects thereby at the same time stimulating them to infuse more creative work into other parts of the curriculum of YST. We would also work more closely with the team responsible for the orientation phase, something that hadn't really happened before.
The second week of July the teams were established of colleagues who were going to be involved. The first team was responsible for coaching the creation processes, a second team was responsible for video and the visual aspects and organisation of the performance, a third team was going to be responsible for recording and live-streaming. A small group was also going to shoot some video materials of the project for a possible making of documentary in the future. It was also definitely decided not to avoid the COVID related difficulties by postponing the project further into the semester, but to find creative ways to work with the situation as it unfolded. Exactly this decision forced us to find new and unexpected directions for the project, which in the end generated many surprising and creative ideas and solutions.
STRATEGIES AND WORKING SCHEDULE
After a few sleepless nights I came to the conclusion that no matter what the obstacles were, the project should go ahead before the start of the semster -as planned- and all students should be included, regardless of location and the situation they were in. We should find a process of working which would allow live interaction, real-time distance interaction, and the asynchronous production of materials. Since a live-audience was also strictly ruled out, the final result would most likely be live-streamed or pre-recorded and disseminated in other ways. Eventually the performance was live-streamed and the stream was archived on the new Spotlight section of the YST website.
The next step was to make an inventory of all students and their situation. There were various groups: Singaporean students who were already in Singapore and free to move around, foreign students already in Singapore but quarantined, foreign students still at home but scheduled for travel and quarantine and foreign students who did not have a chance to book a flight yet and would most likely not be able to come in for the performance. As this situation was changing all the time, the first step taken was to connect them all virtually. In order to do this my idea was to let them produce four so called video-postcards with different content. These videos could simply be shot on a mobile phone and there were no requirements regarding quality. We sent each of the students a request to make the following:
• A video with a 2 minute drone played on your own instrument. Just a single note,
the playing style is free.
• A video with a short melody or song which can be inspired on a local folk-song but can
also be your own improvisation (about 1 minute in length)
• A video where you present yourself in a few words
• A video with scenery of your surroundings
The students were given a week to upload the videos to a shared drive, which gave us some time to think of how to exactly process, present and use the materials further on in the project.
What follows next are some excerpts of the video materials that were sent in by the students, and some of my comments:
VIDEO POSTCARDS - DRONES
Watching and listening to the drones I was struck by the huge variety of characters, and found it fascinating how much of the musical personalities of the students was revealed by them. The first fragment is from a composition student, clearly showing attention to details regarding dynamics, rhythmic character and articulation. The string players are a bit more traditional, trying to play a beautiful note. In the fourth fragment an audio arts student uses -very originally- a 50hz hum as a drone, to then route it through a set of guitar pedals.
VIDEO POSTCARDS - MELODIES
We received a great variety of melodies, most based on existing folk-songs or material the students were familiar with, some improvised, some very simple and straighforward, some elaborated and played with great virtuosity. Again, even though they were short fragments they showed clearly the temperaments and character of our future students.
VIDEO POSTCARDS - SCENERY
Again a great variety of materials: scenes from quarantined life, views from hotel rooms, cityscapes, gardens, parks and nature.
THE INTRODUCTION VIDEOS
For reasons of privacy I will not post the personal introductions here, but it is easy to imagine what these would look like, as their main purpose was to introduce oneself to their new classmates.
HOW TO USE THE VIDEOS?
Once all submissions were in and we had a huge variety of video materials, it was actually completely open what would be done with it. First of all, by simply sharing it among all students they could get to know each other, see what their classmates looked like, what they sound like, and get just a touch of each other's cultural background. But more importantly, we sensed that the materials could function as a catalyst to get creative processes going, even though we did not yet know how...
VIRTUAL JAMS
After a discussion with Mervin Wong (the leader of the visual team) we decided to process and organize all videos before making them accessible to all. By arranging the drone videos in pitch-order from low to high we created a kind of meta-instrument: videos with different pitches could be combined to create virtual jams. These jams could be extended with melodic material in an easy way by organizing them by key. Just to get an idea Mervin and I made a few sketches of virtual jams to share with the students and see if they would be interested to pick up on the idea.
To the right are three examples of what such a jam might look like. The first clip combines drones and melodies in the key of d minor. There are endless combinations possible, especially when experimenting with the variation of timing of the clips in relation to each other, as well as their rhythmical connections.
The second clip is based on third relationships. The initial third C#-E expands downward to a major 9th chord on D with a slow build-up of six drone pitches, on which then a melody is superimposed.
The third clip shows some superb editing by Mervin Wong: the violinists are Chinese twin-brothers from Chengdu, now turned into triplets. By flipping one of the pictures the players face each other; there is a stronger sensation of them playing together. They are subtly accompanied by drones of the mallets and voice.
In this way the collection of videos became a tool for composition, offering endless variteties of assembling new pieces. The process is interesting, playing alone became playing together, or at least it created the illusion of playing together. While I think this is not the place to philosophize, it poses a number of questions on the nature of collaboration and the relationship between the virtual and the real.1
We realized that this creative project intended for the students had already become a creative project for ourselves as well.
THE WIND GROUP
>> 2 videos of the online zoom session AND live-stream of players playing with the session.
THE PERCUSSIVE GROUP
DAY1
3 streams: covid opera, percussive group, winds and remote group.
Describe process of group 1 and show some video of covid opera in progress.
Describe process of group 2 and video
Describe process of group 3 and videos
Final performance, live stream group video optional (edit)
