During the pandemic I was commissioned to compose Mitt Jag at Regionteater Vast for Heidi Vierthaler. It's a piece about identity and accepting yourself for who you are made for young audiences. Because of the Corona travel restrictions and my own personal health problems I ad to make the composition remotely which came with it's own set of challenges and revelations.
Toiletries
(2021) Toiletries Demo
We like to get some rehearsal music going before we start we the project. We already met with all the people involved as well as Samira Boon (who had an awe inspiring Powerpoint presentation). Samira was going to work with mouldable fabrics so that was our first textural lead for the piece.
For this composition I prepared a bunch of paper texture samples. Also I created a drum kit made from objects in my toilet, the rim, brushes, deodorant, you name it it was in the kit. Heidi absolutely adored the piece, so much so that she ended up hijacking it (no hard feelings) for another piece she was making with the students of the JMD/UC department.
Slowly Falling Apart
(2021) Slowly Falling Apart, Toiletries long form adaptation for UC/JMD
With the Toiletries composition looped about 10 times to hit the runtime of her piece at the academy Heidi was planning to let the students perform. I just couldn't bear having a piece run for so long on just two minutes of music. So I decided to extend the piece, we would end up using it for Mit Jagg, right? Slowly Falling Apart is an extremely abstract piece mostly consisting of textures with some staccato guitar swells throughout. It's quite exciting listening back to the demo now.
Looking forward to the process in Sweden I decided I wanted to deepen the composition further by adding another element. I invited Michele Mazzini over to my studio to record some bass clarinet to the piece and weaved it throughout. Long story short it didn't click with Heidi.
A Second Pair of Ears
This is the point where a second pair of ears is an absolute godsend, a blessing. Especially when working on such avant garde music it can be hart to tell which direction something is going. Slowly- was turning into a convoluted train wreck which I couldn't see since I was too close up.
There sure are some interesting passages in there but Heidi's feedback made me realise that I needed to leave this piece in the past and start composing new works. I'm not a big fan of derivatives anyway.
(2021) Ripple - Demo For Mitt Jag
Rack Test
(2021) Rack test
So it's back to the drawing board. The scenography by Tomas Sjosted consisted of a trapezium skeleton. I looked around my room and, guess what? I also have a skeleton pyramid the function is different (it's a laundry rack) but still, best I could do from a distance. I put two contact mics on the two base feet of the rack and an overhead condenser with a stereo pair on the bottom. The result of this experiment is in the audio clip. Some pretty exciting abstract clings and clangs were the result that I could develop further into the compositions necessary.
Radiohead
(2021) Tent Music / It Really Doesn't Sound Anything Like Radiohead
A little wildcard got thrown into the ring, Radiohead. When I joined a rehearsal over Zoom I heard that they were dancing to some songs by them. During the rehearsal I picked up my guitar and made a little phonetic attempt to replicate the feel of one of the songs. The scene they were working on had this school camp, tent like association to me so that explains the title. This is the first piece of music I wrote that actually ended up in the piece. A little scene where Oliver plays a folded fabric guitar and playbacks the gibberish lyrics.
Give Me the Samples!
So this is the part where again it got a little tricky. Heidi had some useful demo's in her pocket and was slowly steadily building the piece in Sweden. While I was awaiting fresh input in the Netherlands. Heidi really wanted to use the voices of the dancers in the piece so she got Tomas to record a lot of little noises and stories one afternoon.
I was overloaded with material to work with and extremely inspired. In the next few paragraphs we will glance over some of the highlights and how they were sculpted to fit into the piece.
Whispers and Whistles
(2021) Whispers -> Pulse
The first sound that makes your ears perk up in this piece is the strange warbled humming noise. This was Rebecca blowing on a piece of fabric into the microphone. Granulated and pitched into a strange alienating pad. The whistling was my acoustic input in the piece. Short brief phrases to keep it a bit playful and open. As the piece develops whispers come in, like gossip on a playground. As the whispers develop I payed around with broken string textures to give it a bit more harmonic layering to hold on to. The stepping/ladder noise between the pulses is one of the remnants of the drying rack experiments.
There was no real concept to this opening piece of music, just finding proper places to fit the samples and sounds into and adding noises like the breathing in the latter half of the piece. The only rider I had was that it needed to have this pulling sensation which is something that really came out in the end.
Beats and Alien Landscapes
(2021) Scratch Rhythms -> Static
After supplying a lot of atmospheric elements to the rehearsal space I was decided to make something with a little bit more rhythm to it. There are some absolute gem's in the breaks where at some points you can hear Heidi directing the dancers on how to manipulate the fabrics in front of the microphone. The samples also proved really invaluable at points where you can barely notice them being there. Most of the drum sounds were made with the sound from the original Toiletries Kit and the Rack Test.
Accidental, unintended narrative devices are extremely fun. Heidi and me often compose the music in a way that leaves a lot of happy accidents for the dancers. In this case it was the other way around where she left a lot of happy accidents for me to explore. Something about the direction 'explore the landscapes' being said in a tone that isn't supposed to be heard makes me feel like I'm part of a secret mission.
I will let the latter part of the composition speak for itself. I made this dream like soundscape with bubbles and noises and I have a lot of amazing associations with the amazing voice work that I got to nuance into this piece. (Alien spa day, anyone?)
Fergalicious Dinosaurs
Fergalicious. That was the job, a Heidi-esque interpretation of the early 2000's hit Fergalicious. Let me set the scene, the dancers are using the fabrics as ornaments in a fashion show. And they need something poppy and bubbly to get them going. Luckily I found an extra sass recording of Rebecca talking about her childhood dinosaur rain boots and how she pretty much stomped on everyone. A great song subject if you ask me and quite a sassy story which fit the energy of the song. Also, the dancers kind of looked like dinosaurs while doing the fashion show. Kind of like a win, win, win scenario apart from the fact that... It's Fergie. The song starts at around 3:00 if you are unfazed sensible theatre intro's.
(2021) The Dinosaur
I just wanna strut around like a dinosaur
I dont really care what you have to say no more
Just let me do my thing, let me flaunt around
If you don't like it you can eat the ground
Stick the Landing
(2021) Mitt Jag Epilogue
So after the Dinosaur scene the piece resolves, it's ok to just be yourself and be proud of it. I decided to bring back elements from the opening of the piece and let Heidi have the dancers respond differently to a similar sound. It's kind of peaceful but still carries some renewed tension after the light of the previous scene.
On Remote Work
Working remotely on this project proved to be extremely difficult. I also haven't been able to really meet all the amazing artists that made this piece possible. The fabrics by Samira are absolutely magnificent so go check out her website and other works. A multitude of thanks to Tomas for doing the recording of the dancers and providing me with all the uncut material (it was a lot to go through but it really helped). And of course to Heidi for her faith and loving use and abuse that I sometimes really need.
Choreography
Heidi Vierthaler
Assistance
Shay Partush & Luca Cacitti
Costume Design
Heidi Vierthaler & Johanna Ramsin
Textile Artist
Samira Boon
Composer
Tom van Wee
Installation Designer
Tomas Sjöstedt
Lighting
Ida Gustafsson