"performances"

Begin with entrance music: zheng (Chinese zither) and suling (Indonesian bamboo flute). Played in the style of Kecapi Suling (easy listening Javanese music), but with live multitrack recordable moments, played back and looped at varying speeds. Add a pinch of delay for effect.

Then The Honey Ant Song from my 1980 Australian aboriginal inspired piece "Native Cat Songs". Using jaw harp, bamboo and coconut shell drums with rhythmic cells of 6/4 + 3/8 (15 eighths) or 4/4 + 5/8 (13 eighths) cycling over steady quarter note click sticks.

Following that, 7557 is a rhythmic formula that adds up to 12, and could be a Big 3 or 4 or subdivided otherwise. Described as Klezmer meets Salsa, 1994.

After which is Cremation Music, my take on Balinese ritual music for the celebration of the soul's release. Performed on the 4 note gamelan instruments from the Rockland Angklung Society (Gamelan Son of Lion), from 1994.

Ending the first set with Bali Hi, in which a tune from the musical South Pacific is re-united with its namesake island via gamelan arrangement. In this way a piece of musical kitsch (which was not about Bali itself, but a mythical South Pacific island), returns to its origins with samples that remind us of Balinese gamelan, while retaining its unique nature of "exotica". Conjuring with theremin and voice "a place you would like to be".

Set two is the interactive digital part, opening with InnaGadda Detective for floor tom, cymbal and laptop. Each successive note of the famous riff is played when the drum is struck, simultaneously unpausing a segment of old time radio drama. It's about American pop music history, and the deconstruction thereof. Parallel is the reference to American radio dramas, of a quite different time period, and again deconstructed (sampled, edited, remixed, and recontextualized). The interpretive act of the phrase "Inna Gadda da Vida" may be seen as a deliberate mispronunciation of "In the Garden of Eden", the mythological place where the first pre-civilization, pre-historical Biblical paradise existed. And it is also the very same place from which we were unredeemably exiled, creating the concept of "original sin".

Following that, It's Not About the Money is my newest composition. Using samples of pop songs about money triggered by slide guitar, and manipulating projected images of money art, and layering my own image via webcam, and triggering other sample with the webcam. This is a total interactive collage about money, from which I won't make any money, because my art is not about that.

Next for something soothing, easy and curious - the Theremin in a sui generis (and hyper-sensitive) method of sample triggering with velocity and proximity. Fujara uses sounds from the overtone flutes of Slovakia, and Pythia uses the ideas and sound bites of Hitchcock's film Suspicion mingled with the ancient tradition of oracle as medium to an other state. Occupational Therapy is the breakthrough piece, constantly reshuffling the deck (of samples). I wanted to surprise myself while performing this piece.

Finally Gamelan in the Air. You've heard of air guitar? well this is gamelan played in the air, with a webcam projecting in real time. A grid of 8 zones in space , and each one triggers a certain pitched octave, key, drum or gong. We are hoping for a tag team audience involvement.

The rest is just a flick of the wrist.

- david simons, 6/24/16
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