By
Maggie Burnett
Arizona Daily Wildcat
2 members of Bang on a Can All-Stars speak about music's affect on public space
Which came first - the music or the space?
Two members of the group known as Bang on a Can All-stars spoke to a group of about 40 UA students, staff and faculty yesterday night on this very topic in the lobby of the Architecture building known as the Centrum.
Mark Stewart and Evan Ziporyn discussed not only different aspects of the group's music but also the role music plays in shaping a public space.
"The public space is important to us as performers. We spend so much of our lives in manufactured spaces," Ziporyn said. "The sonic component (of a space) is just as structured as a structure of space but nobody's given it thought."
The focus of the discussion revolved around the group's remake of musician Brian Eno's piece "Music for Airports,"a movement of music created in the late 70s/early 80s as a "background of everyday life."
"It's an acoustic version of an electronic piece," Ziporyn said. "We brought back to life old music. (We) found the act of humanizing the sound changed the nature of the sound."
The idea for Bang on a Can All-Stars originally formed in 1986 when group members David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe found themselves in a musical rut.
Wanting to provide a place for new music in society, the trio got together and created the first "Bang on a Can Festival" in New York City, an endeavor none of the musicians felt would prove fruitful.
However, by 1992, the festival had received such high acclaim that the trio called on three more of the festival's best musicans and the Bang on a Can All-Stars were born.
As part of its mission, the All-Stars have made it a point to combine the act of performing with the concert forum, forming an altogether different approach to musical presentation.
Part of the reason Stewart and Ziporyn were asked to speak in the Centrum of the Architecture building was due to the airy, open feeling of the building's lobby.
"We'd heard we'd be (speaking) for architecture students in this great space," Stewart said about the Centrum. "This is a big, calm space. It's lovely to do a talk in such a space."
Chuck Albanese, associate dean of the college of architecture, was also on hand at the lecture, commenting adversely as to how space also affects music.
"The environment of space really affects music," he said. "It's interesting to think about how music affects space."
Bang on a Can All-Stars has toured throughout the U.S and Europe presenting its music that has been described as "equal parts rock band and classical ensemble."
In addition to playing its latest piece "Music for Airports" tonight at Centennial, All-Stars will also perform jazz composer Don Byron's "Eugene 1" accompanied by a filmed episode of the 1960s classic "The Ernie Kovacks Show." Both pieces reflect the type of music often described as ambient, background music for public spaces.
"The concert hall became the space and we became the installation in that space. It became a different way of being for us," Ziporyn said. "In turn, we began getting invited to do pieces in airports. The whole airport became a giant work of art."
Stewart added to Ziporyn's description of the airport as a work of art, mimicking some of the sounds a person might hear in an airport yet would still not associate with music.
"Disinterested listening has become the norm so now what do we do?" he said. "The thing to do is accept that and give thought to sound in a space."
Although some may have grown disinterested in music, Stewart acknowledged the group's goal to keep every performance interesting.
"There's nothing like just being human to make the performance different every night," he said.
Yet, not all members of the audience were comfortable with this idea of "randomness" in performance.
"I have a hard time understanding random music when there are rules you have to set on yourself," said Caroline Smogorzewski, an architecture junior. "(We) never create anything randomly. It's naturally inherent to make sense of things."
One thing Albanese said he would like to remain consistent, though, is the use of the Centrum for special forums like this one.
"We don't do enough of it," Albanese said. "Architecture is one of the truest interactive examples of art. (The Centrum) is intended for exhibit and music. It's intended to be alive and I hope the university uses it more frequently."
