THE ASIAN CIVILISATIONS MUSEUM TRIO PROJECT
The first steps in the development of this project were influenced by the restrictions of the COVID situation. Normally these concerts are played at the museum for a live audience, but now it was practically certain that this was not going to be possible. So the first part of our creative process was to think of a different way to reach our audience, as well as different ways of creating our material. Quite soon we saw some opportunities that could arise from the situation; rethinking was needed.
After analyzing the situation and talking to the organizers of the museum, we decided that we would prepare to play the concert in front of a large screen, which would be live-streamed to the various social media outlets of the museum. The large screen would contain video and images of parts of the museum collection, and we would try to make active links between the music and the images. Having absolutely no pre-conceived ideas, and little knowledge of the museum collection, it seemed best to go for a visit to the museum first.
THE MUSEUM VISIT
A visit was arranged for us with a special guide for the Tang Shipwreck exhibition. This is an extraordinary collction of artifacts found in a shipwreck of a trading ship that sank in the Java Sea in the 9th century. It showed how there was an important trade route over sea between China and the Arab Abassid Calliphate, over an enormous distance. 70.000 bowls had been mass produced and hand painted, only to disappear in the waves. Further exhibition spaces showed an enormousy varied collection, from Islamic art, Indonsian sculptures of forefathers, Buddha statues from South India to Japan and everything in-between to jewelry, tapestries, fashion and earthware1
The first step to take now was to make a selection of artifacts that could inspire us, and be the seeds for the music we wanted to create. We agreed to take a full tour, make photos here and there and then use the following week for each of us separately to develop ideas. Once things would come into focus we could return to make extra photos for the slides that were going to accompany the performance.
INSPIRATIONS
To have a representative idea of the creation processes in the trio project, I will describe below four selected sources of inspiration, and how they initiated and developed the eventual music:
THE SHIPWRECK AND THE STORY OF THE BOWLS
The fascinating story of the shipwreck and its contents inspired me first of all by the idea of connection. How different cultures have connected through trade, and how they have influenced and learned from each other. It reminded me of how music is shared between cultures: even though we have many distinctive styles and musical cultures, there is a common denominator which is entirely human. And in some sense this common denominator goes beyond that, into the realm of physics. I made the association with pentatonic scales: many cultures have made music with them without being physically connected in any way. The perfect fifth interval funcions as a generator for many of our musical scales, and the pentatonic is somehow an ideal compromise between contrast and simplicity.
My associations went a step furhter in thinking about the bowls, their decorations showing infinite variations on themes like birds, plants, flowers, and abstract designs. Maybe I could create variation by changing the perspective and colors of the pentatonic scales? To achieve this I experimented with different modes of the pentatonic and different harmonic contexts through bass variation. By improvising on the piano I ended up with a simple phrase, which is depicted on the right.
With practically the same note material I made a simple contrasting motif representing the rocking of the ship. It consists of 9th chords in parallel harmony (see picture on the right).
The process we followed after that was to simply start improvising, taking the composed basic ideas as a starting point, and allowing gradually for more fixed versions to appear. In a similar way this happened with materials created in the First Year's Creative projects, and I like to call this a process of crystallization, or crystallized improvisations.
THE BAZAAR
Syafiqa was inspired by a section of the museum with ceramics and ceramic storage jars, which apparently were found at a site that had been a medieval Bazaar. Finding tapestries depicting travelers on camels as well, she imagined the bustling medieval life of traveling and trade and wrote a theme in 7/4 fitting her imagination. This was a starting point for us to develop in various ways. Eventually she decided to compose it further out into a more fixed form, which we could than arrange in an improvisatory way. The initial theme is depicted on the right.
YODHA MAN: STATUES OF THE ANCESTORS
Tony was triggered by a section in the museum showing statues and sculptures of ancestors, both from Indonesian and Indian origin. Being a very skilled Mridangam player and expert on Indian rhythms, he had been working on a theme earlier on that had never found a place. The theme was called Yodha Man and he readily associated it with the sculptures. He decided to take this and adapt it for our trio to play and expand on.
TRIANGLES: AN EXTRAORDINARY PIECE OF JEWELRY
The last example is from a piece that came through inspiration of an extraordinary piece of jewellery from the West of Indonesia. Called Marangga, it is a quite large golden breast ornament consisting of two triangular shapes connected in the middle. I was fascinated by the material and the shape, a certain abstract quality that far surpasses its use. Apparently, as a piece of heirloom jewellery this was only suppposed to be worn on very special ritual occasions.
With the double triangular shape of the marangga on my mind I started to have the association with certain abstract triangular patterns we find in music. A most famous example may well be the harmonic structure of Giant Steps by John Coltrane, preceded by similar examples of Schubert and Ravel. Such harmonic structures connect key centers on major third distance, such as B, Ab and Eb. After some improvising at the piano I came up with a retrograde version of the Giant Steps, connecting the key centers of C, E and Ab with quite straightforward dominants. Combined with an irregular grouping of the chords this pattern creates the sense of rotation and symmetry. The basic harmonic structure is depicted on the right.
Further steps in the process were to improvise with the basic ideas, leaving certain things very open, and composing others out into more fixed forms. We had to find also a way of synchronizing the projected images with the music for the live stream. This we achieved by creating cues for the streaming team so they would know when we moved on to a next item in our playlist. The final result was a suite of pieces accompanied by images and video and was streamed live on the ACM facebook page. It can be watched on the presentation page.
