Eleven musicians sit down in a semicircle, instruments resting on their knees. They gaze at the conductor, waiting for his hand gestures that will tell all, because the musicians have no sheet music.
“For me, it’s like going for this ride,” conductor J.A. Deane said. “The interesting thing about making music this way is we have no idea what it’s going to be like. It’s as much of a surprise to the audience as it is to us.”
Deane, the conductor of the New Mexico-based Out of Context Orchestra, said the orchestra performs a special style of music called “Conduction,” which doesn’t require sheet music.
“It’s a music composition driven by a vocabulary of hand signs and gestures delivered by the conductor,” he said. “These hand signals are interpreted by the ensemble of musicians in real time.”
Butch Morris is the creator of Conduction, and Deane said he worked with Morris for about 15 years. In 1997, he decided that he would give Conduction a try.
“It’s really just about making music the way that this Conduction vocabulary allows you to make music,” Deane said. “That’s what I find interesting about making music this way. You really surprise people.”
Deane said the majority of the musicians in the Out of Context ensemble have been performing together for more than 14 years.
Deane began the ensemble with two performances in 1997, and by 1998, the Out of Context Orchestra was officially formed.
In its upcoming performance as part of UNM’s John Donald Robb Composers’ Symposium, the orchestra collaborates with two actors who read a script that compliments the music. Actors John Flax and Lee Reed are also improvising — they will not have read the text before performing it.
C.K. Barlow, a musician for Out of Context and a music professor at UNM, performs what is called live sampling.
Using a microphone or line input, she records parts of the ensemble on her laptop whenever she hears something she thinks is interesting. Barlow then manipulates it and plays it back as another component to the ongoing performance.
I am “turning it backward, stuttering it, pitch bending it and so forth, again using controls on my keyboard,” Barlow said.
Barlow said the result is a smorgasbord of sound.
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“It all happens really quickly and can result in some pretty otherworldly sounds,” she said. “Combined with the overall improvisation by 13 band members, things get wild. It’s very fun.”
Out of Context Orchestra
Outpost Performance Space
210 Yale Blvd. S.E.
Friday
7:30 p.m.
$10
