Postcards from Quarantine

Arteidolia
June 2020

During these months under lockdown, musicians have had to come up with creative ways to maneuver through a “no gig” zone. We’re been seeing live streaming events, to socially distanced street performances, to free or pay-what-you want Fridays on Bandcamp. Postcards from Quarantine gives another spin on this challenge.

Daniel, can you take us through the process of how this collaboration came to be?

Sure. Like many artists during this time of seclusion, I’ve looked for ways to maintain creative communication while remaining physically apart from fellow artists. Despite the barriers of physical separation it has imposed, the COVID-19 sequestration has turned out to be the stimulus for forging new collaborative relationships and for revisiting and refreshing old ones. Call it a force for creative action at a distance.

Postcards from Quarantine, a joint audio work by cellist/sound artist Gary Rouzer and myself, represents the pandemic-provoked resurgence of a long-time creative partnership. In March, about four weeks into the DC area’s stay-at-home order, Gary called to talk—to talk about music, our respective situations relative to the virus, and our lives in general. The conversation was envigorating and inspired me a few days later to suggest that we collaborate on a new joint work. Gary and I have collaborated with each other for well over ten years now—beginning not long after he introduced me to the DC area experimental music scene, an introduction that turned out to have had a crucial effect on the course of my creative work. A distance collaboration—which it would have to be, since Gary lives in Alexandria, on the other side of the Potomac—seemed a natural thing for us to do. A significant portion of my music projects over the years have involved transatlantic collaborations with artists in Italy, such as my frequent musical partner Cristiano Bocci; if it could be done successfully across an ocean and four thousand miles, why not across a river and fifteen miles?

Necessarily, we turned to email dialogue and file exchange. I conceived the idea of recording two improvisations titled Postcards from Quarantine, one for prepared double bass and one for unaltered double bass, and sending them to Gary, who would then listen to them and respond with recordings of cello and amplified objects, respectively. Both improvisations were focused on timbral contrast and development, with pitch relationships playing a largely secondary role. For a third piece, I composed a graphic score for Gary to interpret. The score is one of a series of graphic scores using geometric and other non-standard symbols on a ten-line sheet of music paper; each of these Ten Lines pieces is composed with a specific solo performer in mind and dedicated to that performer. I had wanted to compose one for Gary for a while, and this seemed like the right opportunity for it. Once completed, I emailed the score to Gary with instructions for him to interpret it in any way he wished.

On both Postcards from Quarantine I and II Gary recorded improvisations for acoustic cello and amplified objects, which he then sent me for me to lay over my initial recordings of prepared double bass and double bass. For his realization of Ten Lines (for Gary Rouzer), Gary recorded a series of parts for acoustic cello and amplified objects, which he then assembled by using the score as a visual guide. The results on all three pieces showed that the chemistry we’ve developed over the years during many in-person performances translated well to virtual performance. Gary has played my graphic scores before and always in ways that show an apt and deeply intuitive grasp of how the marks should sound. His realization of Ten Lines managed to be both pleasantly surprising to me and yet perfectly consistent with the spirit of the piece.

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