Melissa and I attended the 22nd Annual Premieres Concert by the Stony Brook Contemporary Music Players at Merkin Hall on November 12, 2009. We were there to see a piece by my friend Douglas Boyce. His piece, Displacements, was a lighthearted deconstructionist piece highlighting the chances that make every performance of a piece different. The players walked around the stage and the music was entirely unpredictable and unexpected in unusual ways. It took advantage of a 12 speaker system to project sound from different directions.
Boyce’s piece was preceded by Margaret Schedel’s Muted Mahogany, in which a number of vibraphone players were directed by a joystick-controlled sound. The piece reminded me of science fiction and it reminded Melissa of the wind at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. It also used the 12 speaker system nicely.