NHK does some impressive things
Feb. 9th, 2008 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarkerWe just caught part of what I think was an experimental sort of piece. A mix of music, setting, and playing with viewing and auditory POV?
Imagine one of the Japanese shrines, well up on a sheer craggy mountain side. In the yard of the shrine are collected a french horn section, one young people's chorus, and the director, with a set of small monitors and two people handling electronics. And up on the peak way over the shrine sits a lone shakuhachi (wooden flute) player. Somewhere across the valley is another young people's chorus. And under a convenient temple bell is a biwa player. (kind of a fat lute?) Somewhere there is someone with a monstrous taiko (drum) and a huge rattle - brass bells on a stick? There was also a men's chorus, all bass voices, somewhere in there.
Everyone has at least earphones for coordination, and most of the groups had cameras capturing their performance and the surroundings, along with several long shot cameras.
Take all that, and then do a performance. With the choruses singing to each other's echoes, dropping back to the haunting tone of a single flute playing from the peak, then the bass voices, leading to the biwa performer (who also sang). And the camera pov shifted, as did the apparent listening point of view. So perhaps we are watching this chorus, but hearing the other as the "local" voice and this one as the remote echo. Or watching from the peaks as the french horns play in the distance. Or in a closeup of the biwa performance.
Quite unusual, and very pretty. I shudder to think of the logistics involved in setting up such a performance, and of course you can't really tell what it is like until you put all the parts together - so it more like a movie than a live performance, but still . . . Nice.
Imagine one of the Japanese shrines, well up on a sheer craggy mountain side. In the yard of the shrine are collected a french horn section, one young people's chorus, and the director, with a set of small monitors and two people handling electronics. And up on the peak way over the shrine sits a lone shakuhachi (wooden flute) player. Somewhere across the valley is another young people's chorus. And under a convenient temple bell is a biwa player. (kind of a fat lute?) Somewhere there is someone with a monstrous taiko (drum) and a huge rattle - brass bells on a stick? There was also a men's chorus, all bass voices, somewhere in there.
Everyone has at least earphones for coordination, and most of the groups had cameras capturing their performance and the surroundings, along with several long shot cameras.
Take all that, and then do a performance. With the choruses singing to each other's echoes, dropping back to the haunting tone of a single flute playing from the peak, then the bass voices, leading to the biwa performer (who also sang). And the camera pov shifted, as did the apparent listening point of view. So perhaps we are watching this chorus, but hearing the other as the "local" voice and this one as the remote echo. Or watching from the peaks as the french horns play in the distance. Or in a closeup of the biwa performance.
Quite unusual, and very pretty. I shudder to think of the logistics involved in setting up such a performance, and of course you can't really tell what it is like until you put all the parts together - so it more like a movie than a live performance, but still . . . Nice.
