A Walk in the Garden of Earthly Delights

I am going to tell you about the concert I was in last night - well only one piece, but interesting would be an understatement. (The L&C event page is here)

"An Evening of Percussion" opened with a colonial drum & fife set playing three American folk tunes - totally amazing & fun to watch.  It filtered through Steve Reich's "Clapping Music" and the World Premier of “U-505” for Solo Timpani by award winning composer John Wilmarth (which was performed by L&C faculty member Brett EE Paschal).  The penultimate piece was "A Walk in the Garden of Earthly Delights."

Now let me tell you, this piece is kinda wierd...it's based on ”The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch (above).

Two days before the concert, Brett asked me to "sing" for the concert - I did NOT know what I was getting into...

The instrumentation requires drums, cymbals, vibraphone, xylophone, tam-tam, the list goes on...and female voices.  This is where I--and the 5 other girls--come in. Split into 2 parts, the "female voices"  are full of erratic, erotic, & elaborate, noises, sounds, yells, screams, moans, panting, growls, etc.  and just a little bit of singing and two points where we needed to match a pitch among a cacophony of percussive sounds (of traditional and experimental fashions).

After our rehearsal (2 days before the concert), we went downstairs and were immediately asked if we knew what all of the noise was about.

At the concert, there was a lot applause...but I'm not sure if people actually enjoyed it or if they were just stunned by the strangeness they had just witnessed.

Anyway - you gotta see this.