No. 13 (The Weights)
Website(s) : http://www.justintornow.com / http://www.leeweisert.com / http://music.unc.edu/facstaff/mcclure
The Weights present a full-length and flexible dance with live music performed by a saxophonist
and a computer musician. The viewers are seated inside the performance which
allows direct interaction.
Biography
Three independent artists collaborated to create No. 13 (The Weights:) saxophonist Matthew McClure, electronic musician, Lee Weisert, and choreographer Justin Tornow.
McClure, Tornow, and Weisert have collaborated on three projects in 2013-2014; Any Thing That Is Strang / No. 10, INSTALLATION, and No. 13 (The Weights,) the submitted project for Sax Open 2015. McClure, Tornow and Weisert will begin a new work in Spring 2015, incorporating laser harps with choreographed movement; the piece uses interactive laser sensor technology, live electronics, and live musical improvisation to explore how meaning evolves uniquely in music, movement, and language.
Detailed biographical information for each artist is available on their corresponding websites.
More information
No. 13 (The Weights) is a 45-minute work merging live music and dance. The performance of the work is malleable to a variety of sites and audiences. The dance is built around an immersive seating design, with all seats arranged in an X; this way, the audience is seated within the dance work, and invited to engage with it from a different perspective than is usually afforded in more traditional performance venues.
This work is being submitted in the Other category for the Sax Open conference. This performance, presented in one movement, is best presented in a non-traditional space. The audience is oriented into the work, not separated from the performers. The work was premiered earlier this month at a gallery in Durham, NC, USA. As we are not intimately familiar with the venues in Strasbourg we are unable to recommend a location for the performance, but instead look to the committee organizers to assign us to an appropriate space (or spaces.)
The accompanying sound score by Weisert and McClure explores various sound worlds; a marriage of composition and improvisation for electronics and saxophone. Each section of the score explores a different central theme or motive. Weisert generates sound through live sampling, previously recorded, and synthesized sounds. McClure employs many traditional and extended techniques.
Press from World Premiere in December:
Chris Vitiello of Indy Week noted, “[Tornow] created movement within the seating area that only parts of the audience could see. If the action was directly behind you, you had to decide whether or not to turn around to see it… Tornow made you watch the other audience members, who were in your line of vision at all times, as much as the dancers… passive viewing was impossible. Instead, you were part of a witnessing mass, like a chorus that never says anything.”
Kate Dobbs-Araill’s review in the Classical Voice of North Carolina (CVNC) noted, “Tornow’s work focused on the body’s density, connectivity and capacity for sudden explosive changes… hands reach and clasp. Bodies lean/fall/catch/sink/lift. They might entangle, or one dancer might raise another’s leg, or the whole person…”
Vitiello of Indy Week: “musicians Lee Weisert (electronics) and Matthew McClure (saxophone) create a lava-like burble… McClure uses extended techniques, sometimes just fluttering and clicking the keys rather than blowing his horn. Leaning over his laptop, Weisert produces underwater sounds and shortwave radio recordings from WWII-era ‘numbers stations.'”
From S. Broili’s review of No. 13 (The Weights) in the Herald-Sun, “original music composed for the dance and performed live by Matthew McClure and Lee Weisert added to the intensity and excitement of the performance. These two created a sound scape that included Weisert’s electronically augmented sections of McClure’s live saxophone playing, as well as McClure’s recognizable horn sounds… it added another aspect of aliveness to the performance.”