Back from Bs As, part three

At the evaluation of the concerts Lola made another interesting remark. We were talking about things that went wrong during the concert. (For instance the music piece ‘finger scenes’ by Abel Paul, where the piano player was having trouble with the cassetteplayer. Lola told me her dad thought this was part of the piece. I too was for some time in doubt.). She said that it was interesting when a concert can incorporate those ‘mistakes’. And that it even can be creative when unexpected things happen. That is, I think, very true. On the other hand there is a point when a mistake can’t be incorporated any more into a piece, that it is really something from outside, intruding the music in a way that can’t be dealt with. There is a very small twilight zone between those two states. I think, I hope, the mistake in my piece was from this twilight zone.

The surprise element was a problem with one cassette-player of one changuito, –in which the tape was getting stuck-, just shortly before the concert, so there was too little time to fix it. At least too little time for me, although the time I spent on it on stage, closely watched by the audience, while Cecilia was telling about the political dimensions of the changuitos, felt like an eternity. Even replacing the cassette player by a spare one would have taken to much time, but then I should have taken that decision earlier, which was a difficult one, because I already sacrificed my one and only spare cassette player because of problems during the rehearsing process with one of the tape-players. So there I was with my back against the wall having no other option left than playing the piece with only one changuito with sound and other without sound. Because having come all the way to Buenos Aires, having put so much effort into the piece and then not performing my piece was out of the question.

Of all surprises the real ones come from unexpected corners; that’s why they are called surprises; that’s literally what Luciana told me a day before. So this was a real surprise which changed my composition considerably, for the sonic interplay between the changuitos and the singer is very much a trio, with hoketus elements and imitation, mirroring, etc. And now I was missing one instrument! Luckily the visual part, the choreography was still there. That saved the piece. One could think (and so I did) the intended sounds from the changuito without sound.However the audience didn’t know what to expect and they received the piece enthousiastically. That was an enormous relief….

So the premiere was a mixed experience. It was half nightmare but also half of it was quite satisfactory, because somehow the piece still worked. It kept standing on it’s legs. We’d been working very hard on it, and that showed. My musicians did very well. I saw the piece and I felt happy.

One of the things I’ve been enjoying so much is the rehearsing process and reworking the piece, that is mostly: skipping parts that were not working. For instance some passages with too complicated rhythms, which would take too much time to practice I had to skip. The music only benefited from it. And then: I was fortunate to have such a considerable amount of time to practice (in total 17 hours in one week, which is a luxury). Plus: I had very dedicatied musicians. Both the changuito players and singer did their utmost during the rehearsing process and concert. I’m very thankful to them.

I had an interesting moment, a moment of divine irony. While I was on stage trying to repair the problem with the tape player, with trembling fingers, with a heart-beat of 120, sweating all over, in front of an audience watching the scene on stage and Cecilia introducing my piece telling a long story about the changuito politics, and the audience being quite amused because they were laughing, -a sound coming from very far-, while I was still trying to fix the problem, on and on, desperately trying forever, my eye fell on the empty cassette which I used to guide the tape (that was getting stuck all the time) through the cassette-player. It was a new age cassette from the nineties. It’s title was: a taste of tao.