City Dionysia The Bacchae: Bacchus Crazed Beats
The music of the Bacchae is totally is completely original and impromptu. To keep up with the dark, ominous theme of the play, the music is slightly off-key, random and definitely far from ordinary. A gamelan is played next to an electric guitar, a violin near maracas and in a corner a giant shell f a piano, The Colossus stands, an instrument capable of making the whole theatre quake with a single plink. As the show progressed, the music evolved and as the actors became more centered and focused, the musicians grew wilder and more Bacchus-crazed. The sample below you hear is the starting steps; what the musicians have now is much more frightening and wild.
“This was an inclusive, comprehensive process of music making in many guises – composition, improvisation, performance – research and development, chance and consequence (striking how rare this collective art-creation process actually occurs is in our musical culture). When it works, there is a hyper-exchange, learning process, give and take – and results that have meaning, depth, and musical POWER even in the most nuanced of tiny scrapes. When it doesn’t work, it can be exactly the opposite experience – a quest already in atrophy.”
- Glen Whitehead, Musical Director
“Sing the praises to Dionysus to the beat of the booming drum, exalting in ecstasy the master of ecstasy!”
- Next Post: Final Touches: Costumes & Makeup
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