Part 2

What role does improvisation play for your interpretations?

Jonny Allen: For me, improvisation gives me the tacet knowledge that I apply to a piece of music. When an interpretation is really working, the performance can come across as if it’s completely improvised, the same way a good actor makes you feel when they’re delivering their lines.

One example from Matt McBane’s Bathymetry that comes to mind is the drum set parts Victor and I play in "Groundswell". Historically, drum set parts are largely improvised, and even though Matt has written every note, Victor and I bring an improvisatory feel to the inflection. Loosely, this means injecting subtle dynamic direction and voicing into our parts. Matt did a perfect job giving us enough information to make these sorts of “improvisational” decisions with the music he wrote.

Ultimately, we get all the advantages of an expertly crafted rhythmic counterpoint and development in addition the organic feel and spontaneity of an improvisation.  

Interpretations can be wildly different live compared to the studio. What is this like for you?

Victor Caccese: Sandbox Percussion thinks about live performance and recording as two distinct ways of creating and experiencing art. In the studio, we try our best to create the cleanest and clearest version of any piece we are playing. This often requires utilizing certain recording techniques to be able to achieve sounds that would simply be impossible live.

Multi-tracking and recording in isolation booths are tools that we use to achieve clarity, and expand our palette of colors and dynamic range. Both Bathymetry, and our recent album Seven Pillars (a collaboration with composer Andy Akiho), use a multitude of recording techniques to create a different sound and feel than our live performances of these works.



We do our best to achieve this same amount of clarity during live performance, but never at the expense of connecting with our audience and sharing in the joy of live music making.

With regards to the live situation, what role do the audience and the performance space play for your interpretation?

Jonny Allen: Audience and space absolutely have an impact on interpretation, mostly in the sense that I think interpretation has to be a spontaneous, active process and audience / space provide the occasion for this to happen. This isn’t to say that interpretation can’t be practiced. Rather, practicing and rehearsing give you the ability to hear and understand more inside the music. This way you’re more equipped to respond to what the music needs in the moment.

Having an audience always heightens my senses. I’m not totally sure why, probably something to do with nerves and a bit of mirroring that always happens in social spaces. I can put myself in the audience’s shoes and better imagine what it might be like to purely listen to the sounds I’m making. I always feel like this adds clarity to my interpretation.

As happy as I am with our recording of Matt McBane’s Bathymetry, I know our performance at National Sawdust on December 16th will be full of spontaneous, unique decisions that can only come from sharing a live performance experience in that space with those people.

With regards to the studio situation, what role do sound, editing possibilities and other production factors play for your interpretation?

Matt McBane: In the studio creating our collaborative album Bathymetry, we worked as collaborators trying out different instruments (this snare drum or that? this crinkled plastic bag or that?) and recording techniques to get the right combination of sounds. The engineer, Joseph Branciforte was also an integral partner in this process.

There were times when “interpretation” in a traditional sense was front and center, such as in “Surface”, when the whole track was built around the phrasing and pacing of Sandbox member Terry Sweeney’s beautiful bowed vibraphone performance. It was recorded first and then the rest of the sounds on the track were recorded on top of it.
 


Also, there were some places in the score where room for interpretation was intentionally left in the lack of specificity of the instruments. Like in “Further Down”, I wrote to use “7 pieces of wood, metal or glass arranged low to high.” Sandbox and I then put together a collection of bottles, blocks, metal scraps, etc. to complement each other and the rest of the recorded sounds.



This way of presenting open-ended options for found percussion within a set of parameters in notated music extends back to John Cage.

While the finished recording stayed mostly to my original written score, at times it veered away from it as the sounds we created lead the tracks in new directions. There was also the additional layer of “interpretation” when Joe and I took Sandbox’s recorded performances and then made creative decisions in the mix in response to the recorded sounds.

Some works seem to attract more artists to add their interpretation to it than others; some seem to even encourage wildly different interpretations. From your experience, what is it about these works that gives them this magnetic pull?

Jonny Allen: I feel like music that attracts a wide variety of interpretation often has at least one musical parameter — dynamic, timbre, pitch, rhythm, form, etc. — that is left more open ended. Usually this also means that the other musical parameters are meticulously crafted.

One example that I think most folks would agree with is J. S. Bach, specifically much of his solo instrumental music. In this case, the missing parameter is dynamic. The pitch content, rhythm, and form are all thoughtfully laid out but dynamics are completely missing. The performer can then spend a lifetime deciding what dynamic shapes best convey the elements that Bach has written.

There are also examples of pieces where instrumentation is left open — like some music by Jason Treuting — or pieces where no pitches are written, only contour — like Worker’s Union by Louis Andriessen. There are pieces where pacing and instrumentation are left to the performer—lots of examples in Julius Eastman’s music.



Most, if not all, folk music has a certain amount of rhythmic flexibility that allows for endless interpretations.

Artists can return to a work several times throughout the course of their career, with different results. Tell me about a work where this has been the case for you, please.

Victor Caccese: The first work that comes to mind with this is Steve Reich’s Drumming. This is a piece that I have played for over a decade now and have come to experience and interpret in a very different way.



In my early days of playing this work I was very concerned with detail and execution. There are certain performance techniques in that piece that require a great deal of practice and training. Like with any piece of music, it is very exciting and fun when you are finally able to accomplish and execute these techniques.

Sandbox has now performed this piece for many years, and I find myself stepping back and listening with a more patient and detached mind. I am not sure which one is “better,” but with the latter I find the moments that I share with the audience and my colleagues to be more enjoyable.

Part of the intrigue of interpretations is that the process is usually endless. Are there, vice versa, interpretations that feel definitive to you?

Ian Rosenbaum: I’m not sure if definitive is the right word here. I’m not setting out to try to mimic somebody else’s interpretation, but rather I’m trying to learn what could be possible in any interpretation.

There are certainly interpretations of pieces that have meant a lot to me in this regard - Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations, the original Steve Reich Ensemble Music for 18 Musicians, Leon Fleischer’s recordings of the Beethoven concertos with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. To me, these performances represent a total mastery of interpretation - performers who have spent a lifetime developing the ability to create any musical situation that a piece requires.



This fluidity and aural control is what inspires me the most.