I would mention also the fire-organ and its non-traditional sounds as  highly important in how this music works. As the fire-organ subverts the inherent "musical" qualities of the traditional instruments, and in so doing, strengthens their ability to support the action on stage.
    
less is certainly more, on occasion. 
 
DD
  
please share with all relevant puppeteers.

The Fire Organ, Penderecki and the Base Clarinet

By Sam Kerson guest music editor

  I feel, the music is not really my realm and I am honored that you all let, writing about it, fall to me.

  I continue to have ideas about music, which our musicians generously incorporate. To speak about what is going on out there in our musical environment we should go back to the “Indictment of Kissinger” show, four summers ago. As often happens with innovation, we have been dealing with a complex problem and we are uniquely unskilled, and untrained. Fortunately that has not dissuaded us and we have persisted in implementing solutions!

  In that show we used three or four boom boxes located on different parts of the stage, one played text, one played music, one made sounds, the actors had texts and made sounds like fire works, or said poetry and Jerome acted and sometimes played the key board. We made all the sounds simultaneously, it was like hyperrealism, everything was audible, readable; nothing was lost. The listener felt vulnerable, threatened, would he be able to understand what was being said, the multiple sources demanded a kind of exquisite attention. For Dragon Dance this was the beginning of a new musical method.

So, the problem, a one hour dramatic piece, on the side of very dramatic, in an enormous outdoor space with a potentially large audience and no traditional musicians. By now we have cut all ties with traditional musicians. No one carries or writes a score on our stage no one uses a music stand.

   However we do clearly have live musicians with impressive instruments and great sensitivity and expressiveness and a lot of experience.

   Can we  name the principles?

  Be in the space with the dramatic event and make an appropriate sound.

 Find a way to be in a creative tension with the other sounds that are being generated on the stage.

  Hear how the other musicians are responding to the dramatic event and make a different sound which integrates with and builds on the sound that they are making.

 Join in a continuous creative surge and collaboration, which responds in a full voice to the ever changing scene that you are sharing with the audience and the performers.

 Accept whatever new parameters are added by the contingencies of the performance, such as, no light, no electricity, new musicians, new instruments, fireworks, radios, amplifiers and cds, microphones, chaotic texts, smoke, wind, rain, which may be added or subtracted from the mix at any time.

 Enjoy and make the best of the creative participation of the performers, musicians and non musicians as they turn on and off their sound stations, wet their reeds, adjust their amps, plug in their key boards, fire up their enormous sound generators, turn up there amps, push the play button on their machines, light up there whistles, crackers and bombs or open their glorious mouths to sing, shout, scream, read or say what they will, long or short, loud or quiet..

 Feel supported by the powerful new instruments and musicians who have joined us, the fire organ with it’s sixty unpredictable tubes, Jerome with his ampped up key board and his broad range of musical possibility, remember the sound track of destroying the West Side Highway? Tania with her librarian’s grasp of what is available and her choreographers sense of what is required and her determined approach to participating with her CD player. Penderetsky who we know now is thinking like us while using the Polish national symphony as his musical generator. What a difference Lina makes with her larger and larger deeper and deeper clarinet.  Nicholas, who over the years has played with us again and again. I enjoy when those daring drummers who occasionally cross our path. It won’t be long till Katah with her new sax joins the ensemble. This is our band, eclectic and chaotic, but more important devoted, serious and confident. We all know we can do it.

Dennis’s leadership

It seems to me, and I see on the stage, that an acknowledged central principle is to follow Dennis’s leadership; he has been here the longest and has the surest idea of how to proceed. Dennis nurtures the broadest idea of what is possible in music, what we can call music, what we can make together in the name of music. His very broad idea about what music is, communal, ritual, a basic component of every significant community event, allows all of us a place in the chorus.

 And what do we have? It is a very live and lively sound environment, multiple sources, this is an intriguing idea and fun to listen to, multiple tracks, multiple series of spontaneous solutions. Intersections, loops, synchronicities, real live tangible poignancy, pathos, and heart felt emotion.

We are making an authentic and original sound that is distinctly ours!

We are a creative, lively, spontaneous musical ensemble with a lot of experience solving a unique set of problems. What more can we ask for?

 I think one thing that we have to ask for is recording. Documentation, which we do better in the visual field must also be done with the music. As we expand into New Media, video and other formats we are looking for recordings of these mentioned pieces and really we don’t have them.