Occupy Orchestra 無量園 Infinity Garden
“I had been wandering among the coconuts.” —Paul Dailing, 1,001 Chicago Afternoons
Occupy Orchestra 無量園 Infinity Garden gathers listeners in the pleasurable and reflective space of symphonic music. Musicians play Street Variations as soloists then coalesce into an ensemble. Audience members walk around tuning their ears to a bassoon, then a tuba, then a viola as musicians physically and sonically converge.
Audio excerpt
Inspired by Palindrome Poems (回文诗)
Occupy Orchestra 無量園 Infinity Garden is inspired by classical Chinese gardens, composer John Cage and the occupy movement. Each score page has a feel similar to Chinese landscape paintings that include calligraphy inscriptions. On the bottom right corner of every page, there’s a quote. There are 17 Cage quotes, plus one Occupy Wall Street quote.
The music is also inspired by the huiwen shi (回文诗) palindrome poems. Su Hui (苏蕙), a poet from the 4th century CE, innovated this type of poetry. Characters can be read vertically, horizontally, forwards, backwards, and diagonally. Especially significant is her Xuanji Tu (璇玑图) armillary-sphere map. Using five colors of silk thread, she embroidered 841 Chinese characters into a 29 x 29 grid to create lines of poetry that can be read in any direction for a total of 2,848 poems.
Musical notation and text are placed throughout the page. The score is read non-linearly. Savor the puzzle-like relationship between individual words.
Su Hui's Xuanji Tu
Score (scroll inside frame)
Creative Team
Byron Au Yong, composer
Details
Duration c. 9-15 minutes
Instrumentation variable (winds, brass, percussion, strings, other)
Performances
January 8 – 9, 2013
Chicago Composers Orchestra and audience
Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago IL
Commissioned by the Chicago Composers Orchestra for a free concert that featured nearly 40 classical musicians.
Composition Notes
Occupy Wall Street began in 2011, and continues to gather folks in locations around the world. Attending general assembly meetings in Seattle, I was impressed with the range of protesters from student revolutionaries to recovering addicts to curious bystanders.
Occupy Orchestra prompts the questions:
Why do people gather?
Can the 99% and 1% find common ground?
Does orchestral music provide a solution for democracy in the 21st century?
Drawing reverse inspiration from Joseph Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony composed in 1772, Occupy Orchestra convenes classical musicians and listeners. Additionally, the large-scale work gains intimacy in the philosophical musings of John Cage. Each page of the score provides a koan—a “matter for public thought”—that goes beyond logical reasoning to provoke insight.
Initially, the audience interacts with “busking” musicians, by offering pages of the score notated in graphic notation. The score also provides koans for the listener to reflect on their role as citizens in the new millennium.
Program Notes
“The emotions—
love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust
—are in the audience.” ~John Cage
Walk the zigzag path into a Chinese garden where jagged rocks, misty lakes and meandering walls welcome you. Walk the crowded pavement into a general assembly of the occupy movement where idealistic students, homeless parents and concerned citizens welcome you. We gather here/hear now in the Chinese garden and general assembly of our imaginations.
You can listen. You can watch. You can rustle your papers, walk around the garden, record the event and chant your phrase. This is y/our space. This is y/our time. We shall gather all around, finding power in our sound.
Welcome to Occupy Orchestra 無量園 Infinity Garden
Press Quote
“As I wandered among the musicians and plants, I noticed how many people were capturing the moment. Photographers, mostly. Professional, a lot of them, with sacks and bags and oversized equipment sometimes with the labels of whatever storeroom or newspaper, magazine checkout space they borrowed the damn thing from.
There were a lot of the individual cell phone camera types who can’t look at the world without recording it. Even me, with my little dictaphone, the little Olympus that’s lasted five years and sixty dollars.
Maybe that’s what music is now. Performance has turned from an arrow to a circle.”
Paul Dailing, 1,001 Chicago Afternoons, January 2013
References
Sarah van Gelder, This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street & the 99% movement. 2011
John Cage, Silence: Lectures & Writings. 1961
Ji Cheng (计成), The Craft of Gardens (园冶). 1631