Garden is a three chapter series of live music-driven intermedia performance/installations developed over 5 years that use linear-immersive media (live music, installation, transparent screens and projected video) to explore expressive, atmospheric, metaphoric, psychological and cross-cultural realms of place, night time and the intersection of the human and natural environment.
Garden's imagery, both in video and performative/experiential aspects explore culturally loaded psychological landscapes. These metaphoric compositional landscapes combine the abstract and the representational, the real and imagined, civilization and "wilderness", the transitory beauty of the natural world and the progression of its loss. Musically, the Garden project works between textural/melodic soundscapes, virtuosic instrumentalism, extended instrumental techniques and inter-ensemble cueing in a mixture of strategic improvisation and through-composition.
Distinct from other models of the immersive in which the audience "loses" itself, the environments of Garden engage a kind of self-conscious rapture, creating worlds and demystifying those worlds at the same time. As a consequence of the immersive set up, Garden's repositions the viewer into the performance environment.
Chapter One "Night"
with the Del Sol String Quartet (San Francisco)
Premiere: CCA Santa Fe Dec 2009; touring with Del Sol Quartet 2010-12
Created throughout 2008 and 2009 and premiered December 2009, this first chapter of the Garden project is a collaboration between Chris Jonas and the Del Sol String Quartet (San Francisco). The "Night" installation and linked 50-minute intermedia composition takes place in front of a live audience surrounding the live string quartet within the layers of video screens, mixing live music with projected video of nighttime landscapes and human figures.
This chapter of Garden utilizes the full range of musical capacities of the Del Sol String Quartet, one of today's most adventurous and accomplished musical ensembles. The project also employs a team of artists that include choreographer, Echo Gustafson, stage director, Acushla Bastible, and a team of Littleglobe interns and assistants.
Chapter Two "Invisible Cities" (working title)
with the Tilt SIXtet (brass ensemble, NYC)
Premiere: NYC/Santa Fe 2011
"Invisible Cities" (working title) is the second Garden project "chapter" and is a collaboration with the NYC based brass band, Tilt SIXtet. Like "Night", "Invisible Cities" is a collaboration between Jonas (music and video), the NYC brass ensemble and the Littleglobe creative team in Santa Fe working on the project's projected video, a set of transparent screens (enveloping the performers), performative movement and music. The resulting hour long intermedia composition takes place in front of a live audience within the multiple layers of video screens, mixing live music with projected video of imaginary/surreal "cities" and landscapes exploring expressive, atmospheric, metaphoric, psychological and cross-cultural realms of place, dwelling, urban identity and the human environment.
Inspired by author Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities", the second chapter of GARDEN is an exploration of identity within the human ecosystems. Working with a range of assumed and assigned identities, "Invisible Cities" addresses the experiences of being an outsider, expatriate and refugee (identities assumed, acquired, transposed, hardened by time, corrupted and dissolved), how the human landscape grows from conflicting and obsessive details and the structures of civilization as they undergo aging, corruption and decay.
Distinct from the quietude and moody atmosphere of "Night", "Invisible Cities" will exploit the wide textural and punchy/resonant realms of the Tilt brass ensemble, a group of musicians equally comfortable working with complex musical compositions as well as broad improvisational textures.
The phases of development of "Invisible Cities" include an artist residency June 2010 at the Santa Fe Art Institute, a series of workshops in New York City in August 2010 and Spring 2011, with the premiere Summer 2011.
All of the chapters of GARDEN have been built to break down, set up and and tour easily, created for performances in both traditional and non-traditional venues (installation spaces, black box theaters, public halls, warehouses, etc).
Collaborators
Chris Jonas - composer, director, intermedia / video artist (Santa Fe)
Del Sol String Quartet - collaborating music ensemble (San Francisco)
Tilt SIXtet - collaborating music ensemble (NYC)
Echo Gustafson - consulting choreographer (Santa Fe)
Acushla Bastible - consulting stage director (Santa Fe)
Ilana Kirschbaum - project intern and set design
Petr Jerabek - IT assistant and still photography (Santa Fe)
Robert Drummond - video assistant (Santa Fe)
Matthew Kabakoff - audio recording
Jason Jaacks - project documentary
Littleglobe, Inc - production and administrative support
Del Sol String Quartet
Kate Stenberg - Violin
Rick Shinozaki - Violin
Charlton Lee - Viola
Hannah Addario-Berry - Cello www.delsolquartet.com
Tilt SIXtet
Russ Johnson, Nate Wooley - trumpet
Curtis Hasselbring, Chris McIntyre - trombone
Joe Exley, John Altieri - tuba www.tiltbrass.org
Special Thanks:
Talia Kosh, Darlene Anderson, Chris Sturgis, Richard and Johann Jonas, John Bartlit, Marion Wasserman, Dee and George Gamble, Deborah Fort, Diane Karp, Jenna Scanlan, Eric Rounds, Mary Ann Shaening, Kate Kita, Michael Montoya, and the many other individuals who have made this project possible.
Garden Project Videos on Vimeo
