Salon.com review

OK, we at Sympho are pretty happy with this one. The Green Lama was, according to salon.com, "a mixed-media sensory experience that was like nothing I’ve seen before and, dare I say it, it even bordered on the spiritual." To check out the full review, please click here.

Sold out!

Just got back from the Green Lama concert at the Rubin Museum. Absolutely incredible performance by all, and I've gotta say...I really loved the experience. Creating sound effects and composing music, as well as choosing music by (mostly contemporary) composers and, uh, mashing it all up proved to be great fun. It didn't hurt that we had stellar performers, both musicians (MAYA) and actors (including Linus Roache as the Green Lama and Brian Cox as Willie the Sleeper). Food for thought - it certainly was a new direction for Sympho, and the audience was really receptive to it. Very happy.

Green Lama today!

Today's the big day! Yesterday all the actors came together, Elliott Forrest and I coached them on their roles, and we put it together with the soundtrack. Amazing. Everyone involved in this, from the musicians to the actors to the tech crew, is incredible, and the whole piece is wildly exceeding my expectations. If you're reading this, please help me spread the word. This is a one-time event and seriously not to be missed. If you want to link to the Facebook event page, here's that link.

Too much fun in Green Lama rehearsal?

Well, I'm a big believer in accomplishing a lot in rehearsals, and also in highly-detailed time management. That said, I love it when you hit a rhythm in rehearsal and have a great time. Today was one of those days: MAYA and I rehearsed The Green Lama for four hours this afternoon, and we had a blast. John Hadfield (percussionist) had worked with me earlier to set up our electronics, and today was the rehearsal where we put the "soundtrack" together, playing all the musical snippets and various electronica elements in order, along with a reading of the script from the Green Lama comic book. I'm not sure what it was about this piece - perhaps it's just such a crazy mish-mash of styles, times, and places - but we were, ahem, ROFL the whole time. MAYA plays brilliantly, and it's incredibly rewarding to be able to work with them on such an intimate level.

The actors are WQXR’s Elliott Forrest as narrator, with Law and Order's Linus Roache as the voice of the Green Lama, and Brian Cox—who opens in "Coriolanus" this week opposite Ralph Fiennes—as master crook Willie the Sleeper. Darrell Larson will also be joining us.

Tomorrow we put together the entire Green Lama multimedia project. We'll do a tech run-through with the video projection element (devised by Elliott Forrest), and then the actors will join us for a full-cast rehearsal and then run-through. Should be a great day!

Then Sunday's the big day. Dress rehearsal at 2:30, and the performance at 4pm. Get your tickets here.

Kapow!!!

In just under a week (Sunday the 29th at 4pm, to be exact), Sympho will be collaborating with the extraordinary MAYA Trio (Sato Moughalian, Bridget Kibbey, and John Hadfield) to create a somewhat composed, somewhat improvised soundtrack to a screening of panels from the 1940's cult comic book "Green Lama". Yes, that's with only one "l". A superhero who spends time in Tibet, amassing mysterious powers during his sojourn...not your typical comic book, but certainly a fun one.

I'll be working with MAYA during rehearsals starting this Wednesday, putting it all together, and then we'll join with a wonderful group of actors (Linus Roache, Brian Cox, Darrell Larson, and WQXR's Elliott Forrest) on Saturday to put it all together. This is a first for me, because I'll be performing on laptop instead of conducting. It'll be a wonderful chance to hear some live chamber music in a crazy mash-up of artistic genres (visual art, music, and theater, to be precise). The "soundtrack" portion will be about 15 minutes, followed by an artist discussion. The remainder of the concert will be a mixture of chamber music and electronica, primarily composed of source material for the soundtrack in extended form.

Should be a good one, and I'll hope to see you there! Details here.

Great Phone Call!

I had a wonderful conversation with Ann Hamilton yesterday. Ann is the acclaimed artist creator of the Tower, the 80-foot-high, 16-foot-diameter venue with double helix staircases in which Sympho will perform next June in California. The concert is entitled, appropriately enough, TOWER. I'll share some of the tantalizing details:

• She met Steve Oliver, the man who eventually commissioned the Tower, through a friend who knew that 1) Ann needed some live sheep for a current project, and 2) Steve happened to be raising sheep.

• The double helix staircase is modeled on a specific well in Orvieto, Italy - sheep descend to the water via one staircase, and they ascend via the other.

• OK, enough about sheep! More intriguingly, the Tower is designed to connect the sky and the ground, and Ann conceptualized it as a throat. (Funnily enough, one of the first images that came to mind upon entering the Tower was the vibrating column of air inside the throat or in a woodwind instrument.)

• It's a very INTERIOR space, even though it's outside. You won't get this until you're standing inside, but it's very true.

• Rhythmically, the staircase looks very regular, but it's not. The stairs get narrower and narrower as they ascend - this compression in ascension and relaxation in descent was integral to Hamilton's design.

• The primary experience was intended to be about movement. The stairs have a nice "gait" to them, though I wouldn't recommend walking them for extended periods of time, unless you're going for a great workout!

• You can look very intimately at the person opposite you on the other staircase, but you can't reach them.

• Finally, given its location in an earthquake zone, there is at least as much built UNDER the ground as there is above ground. During the construction, the team brought in workers from a bridge-building company with airtanks to go underground and make sure the concrete pillars penetrated into bedrock.

For more pictures of this singular venue just click here. The Sympho collaborative team is off to experiment in the Tower for a week, starting on October 17. Can. Not. Wait.

TOWER Beginnings

Just a quick note to our fans: after an intense period of reflection over the past months, we are ready to launch into the beginnings of the artistic development of TOWER, commissioned by the Oliver Ranch Foundation and following in the footsteps of artistic luminaries Meredith Monk and Kronos Quartet. The concerts will take place on June 16 and 17, 2012 in Geyserville, CA. Artistic Director Paul Haas and collaborating artists will be in residence in Ann Hamilton's 80-foot-tall structure for an entire week this coming October. Stay posted for further developments.