Music has long been associated with altered states of consciousness. Now when I say that, I’m guessing an artist that comes to mind for many of you might be, say, the Grateful Dead, or Pink Floyd. But have you ever considered the mind-expanding power of classical music?
The Open Score Ensemble would like you to do just that. The group performs interpretive renditions of works by composers in the minimalist tradition. Minimalism often features repeating musical phrases, performed in extended loops on instruments which aren’t often combined in traditional classical music — think electric organs, saxophones, and improvisational chanting.
Paula Tesoriero, organist and vocalist for The Open Score Ensemble, and Jacob Adler, organist and director, joined The Show to discuss how they describe the Open Score Ensemble.
Lately, Adler and Tesoriero have been rehearsing a series of works by the famed minimalist Philip Glass: "Music With Changing Parts" and excerpts from "Einstein on the Beach," Glass’s legendary five-hour opera. The Open Score Ensemble will perform selections from both pieces on Dec. 19 at Crescent Ballroom.
Conversation highlights
SAM DINGMAN: Jacob, let's start with you. How would you describe The Open Score Ensemble?
JACOB ADLER: The Open Score Ensemble is a constellation of very talented musicians that it revolves every, every year and every project. And it started off originally as an improvisation ensemble where we would take musical parameters and record a wide variety of improvisations. And then there was, it shifted more toward performing creative arrangements of 20th century classical music. Composers like Olivier Messiaen, George Leggett, Steve Reich, Julius Eastman, Philip Glass.
DINGMAN: Paula, what appealed to you about this way of playing music?
PAULA TESORIERO: So as I was exiting high school, I was also kind of leaving behind the classical piano lessons that I've been taking for most of my life. And I had a few friends who were in Jacob's improv ensemble and that just seemed like a really sort of free way to explore with the idea of improvisation and approaching music from not just like the written form.
One thing that I really appreciate about Jacob's leadership is that I don't feel pressure, so I don't feel like something should be a certain way, which is something I definitely have encountered, especially as a female musician. And that's not something I've ever encountered in a space of yours, Jacob.
ADLER: It's good to hear.
DINGMAN: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Can I ask what prompted that pivot at the end of high school, that move away from the more, it sounds like, traditional form of playing that you had been doing?
TESORIERO: Yeah, I think that there was a transition for me kind of like halfway through high school where everything was just difficult. And one of those difficult things ended up becoming my relationship with a piano. And I felt very much like it was for other people. Like it had shifted from, I like playing the piano to like my parents have this expectation of me or people just call me like the piano player and that's sort of my identity.
DINGMAN: Sure. Yeah. So how was the experience of coming into the open score ensemble and having what sounds like a much greater degree of freedom?
TESORIERO: It just feels very much like I am a part of this bigger thing and I couldn't do it without all these people around me. And my role is significant, but it is significant because I am a part of something.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Jacob, can you tell me a little bit as the director of this ensemble, how did you move from this kind of completely blank improvisational canvas into bringing the values of improvisation to your interpretations of these composed works?
ADLER: Yeah. That's a good question. After a few semesters of exploring the improvisational ensemble, I, I just simply had a desire to kind of shift to composed pieces. But because the ensemble would have a different instrumentation each semester, music by a lot of minimalist composers like Philip Glass, I thought those scores lend themselves very well.
DINGMAN: And is that because in these more minimalist compositions, the music is kind of more defined by musical phrases as discrete elements rather than like the capacity of the instrument? Does that make any sense?
ADLER: Yeah, absolutely. I think music, “Music with Changing Parts” by Philip Glass, which was composed in 1970 is a great example. When you look at the score, it is for an open score, but it was originally written for his own ensemble, which consisted of woodwinds, voices and electric organs. So there's a very distinct sound world that he created with his ensemble.
But when you look at the score, you can see that the different lines of music, the musical patterns are not scored for specific instruments. And the ensemble has freedom to pick and choose which patterns they want to play. So you see these, this constant stream of eighth notes, these different cells of eighth notes, which are repeated at infinitum until we decide to move to the next one. Those can be exchanged and alternated freely by the musicians.
TESORIERO: And I will also say something I really appreciate about this music is it does require patience. So it requires patience for me, the performer and it requires patience for the listener. And in a world that's moving ever more quickly, it's nice to be asked by something that you know, will only exist for a certain amount of time to exist alongside it.
DINGMAN: That's beautiful. Knowing much less about Philip Glass than either of you. I have this sense that in performing it as a musician, it could become quite trancelike.
ADLER: Absolutely. It's kind of like saying your name over and over again. It, it starts to lose all meaning and becomes a sound, but it does allow me to hear things, what you might call psychoacoustics. Phenomena where you hear all these different sounds that are floating in the room and you start hearing things that might not be there. You might start hearing, phantom musicians, voices that you, or bells or percussion or winds which or strings which might not be in the room, and sometimes minimalism has that effect.
DINGMAN: That's fascinating. Paula, what about for you? What is, what is your experience with the, the trance like nature of this performance?
TESORIERO: Not so much a trance like state for me. But what I do engage with is like as I'm performing, can I almost like take a step back from what my hands are doing and breathe and kind of like relax different parts of my body. Or can I step back from what my hands are doing and like, look at somebody else for a moment.
It's almost like I have space to time slows down in a certain way for a part of me where this other part of me is like, I trust my body, I'm trusting my body completely so that I can focus on other parts of my body to settle into or to just have awareness of the present moment.
DINGMAN: That's so interesting. So, Jacob, you were talking about psychoacoustic phenomena, you're talking about almost more of a physical phenomenology that the music enables that, if I'm hearing you right, is not necessarily available in other styles of performance.
TESORIERO: Yeah, like when I'm playing like an original piece of my own, it goes so quickly, it's there and then it's gone. And this music gives me more opportunity to kind of slow down and be present with what I'm doing, what I'm hearing, the people around me just having this very like open approach, I think, to music versus closed mindedness.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Wow. You know, this is my favorite thing that happens in musical conversations is all of a sudden I feel like, are we even talking about music anymore? Like we're sort of talking about how do you build a community with the capacity to inspire and invent something that's greater than the sum of its parts? It sounds like Philip Glass maybe points the way to that a little bit.
