An exploration of the rhetorical and authoritative modes of music as played out through sampling. Archaic tape loops of the collaborative process will be featured alongside the live performance of the source material. The piece will engage and deconstruct the application and appropriation of sound to create meaning and emotion in our lives. Casey will perform with Davu Seru, Jonathan Kaiser and John Jerry. Works for percussion, cello and tape loops.
deVon Gray (performing second)
A new opus that bridges the gap between the string quartets of Ravel, Kernis, & Barber and elements of hip hop.
In 1959 James Baldwin stated, “The American way of life has failed—to make people happier or to make them better. We do not want to admit this, and we do not admit it.” But art often exposes insults and injustices in a community. The art of composer dVRG reflects our present collectivity, these dark and disturbing times nationally and abroad. With pencil in hand and manuscript paper piled on the desk, his work integrates part soundtrack and part underscore. Soundtracks infuse energy or set the mood whereas scores heighten emotional scenarios or reel the mind. Classically trained and hip hop schooled, dVRG is a composer with attitude, discontent, soul, and raucous intentions to make people happier and better. The musical language will comfort you and draw you in with familiar sonic ingenuity, only to expose your heart/core to the harshness of reality through the harshness of distortions and other techniques specific to stringed instruments. Will this new piece of music fix any of our problems? Absolutely not, but the dialog now has both a soundtrack and an underscore with teeth. From my vantage point the American Dream is a fantasy and a fallacy; this fractious attitude could have been the impetus for this work half a century ago. Let’s work to not have that be the case fifty years into our collective future. This piece is purely instrumental, but there are many literary pieces and excerpts that helped to shape the concept of the work and to focus the Composer’s voice. There’s a timelessness that can exist within any piece of music if the character is just right. Much the same way Baldwin’s words still resonate today, they find an ally in the music of dVRG and the common thread—is soul.