Last night I went to my friend Carrie Biolo's Solo Marimba (+percussion) concert at the Marquette (MI) Arts and Culture Center. The concert took the audience on a journey from 'ooo' to 'ahh', from 'hmmm!' to 'huh?', from 'oh!' to 'WOW!"
When I go out into the world, my eyes and imagination are bombarded with bright colors, interesting textures, sparkling light and deep shadows. I'm moved to try to translate my heightened perceptions on to canvas, like my painting 'Striped Stone'.
I think Carrie Biolo hears things the same way I see things. Her ears and imagination are bombarded with sounds that become a composition. She loves to listen. While most of us hear the annoying din of construction, Carrie hears rhythm and tone. Carrie was in the audience at a Marquette Symphony Orchestra concert, and she was more intrigued by the sounds around her than the music on stage!
At her own concert, Carrie took the time to explain her fascination with listening to the audience before she played a piece called "FallZeit" by Gerhard Stabler. She performed it by dumping Legos into different sized metal bowls. Sometimes she would let the plastic blocks gently trickle from one bowl to the next, each ping its own tiny bell. Other times she would send them crashing into a medium sized bowl and onto the floor in cascades of plastic tinkles.
The sounds and rhythm were fascinating, but many people wouldn't consider this piece music. That's probably OK, because it was a percussion composition, not a musical composition. It made that audience listen. Carrie set up the piece beautifully by first telling the audience how she listens, then challenging us to listen. That made it successful.
I don't know how many people 'got it', and how many did not, but I can assure you that very few people would have appreciated it at all if Carrie hadn't have given us some education and insight to her world of listening. By educating us, she sold the piece to us.
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