Posts from — December 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WHAT: Church of the Friendly Ghost presents:
The Austin Cobra group & Alex Keller’s ‘Eustress’
WHEN: Sunday January 10th, 2009
WHERE: Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Rd.

8:30 PM ‘Cobra’ is John Zorn’s legendary “Game Music” piece. The composition consists of a set of cues notated on cards, and rules corresponding to the cues that direct the players what to do. The number of players, instrumentation, and length of the piece is indeterminate. Since 2003, Cobra has been performed in Austin under the wing of the Church Of The Friendly Ghost, and the Cobra musicians are thrilled to be performing under the auspices of CotFG once again. Cobra will be performed by a large ensemble of local performers and multi-instrumentalists.

9:30 PM ‘Eustress’ is performed on a bass guitar specially designed by Keller, with a winch for a bridge and strung with steel cable. The instrument is played by cranking the tension on the winch, until the instrument is destroyed. In the piece’s first performance, by Deena Odelle Hyatt at the Austin New Music Coop’s Electrons and Phonons IV, the instrument survived the performance. The final performance of Eustress, at which Hyatt will wear safety gear, will definitely include the destruction of the instrument.

‘Eustress’ Program notes:
Systems behave weirdly under stress. A government, a partnership, an individual, and a musical instrument are all systems that can be used to illustrate this phenomenon. Psychologists use the term “eustress” to describe the circumstance in which stress, by presenting it a new challenge to adapt to, makes an individual more highly functioning than normal. In Alex Keller’s piece Eustress, a prepared bass guitar is subjected to unusual mechanical stress by tuning it much higher than it normally could be. The performer is instructed to use his or her judgement as to how much stress to subject the bass guitar to, up to and including its destruction. The analysis of any system under stress is usually stressful to the observer, because he or she is watching something that might be irrevocably lost. Do not consider the instrument so preciously during Eustress. Cracking under stress might be the finest sound a bass guitar can make.