“Check out this amazing piece by Andy Akiho!”

I can’t remember who sent that text to me, though it was probably one my fellow music geek buddies… they’re the usual suspects for sharing new musical discoveries, and in this case the sender was not wrong. Andy’s piano quintet, Prospects of a Misplaced Year, is an awesome piece, epic in scale, and daunting in its technical demands. It’s thrilling music, brilliantly inventive, and exactly the kind of piece that inspired me to be a musician.

Thus was the conversation engaged with colleagues and friends who love this kind of thing, about how and when we might take on the challenge of playing Andy’s piece. The following is a timeline for how a text sets us on a journey that ends with our epic two-part multimedia concert performance, Lost in Deep Time, April 12th at Straub Collaborative in Portland, OR.

Conception – Fall ‘22
I hear Andy’s piano quintet for the first time, and share a recording with colleagues who all agree that it’s a totally rocking piece we must play. I also share it with artist Brad Johnson, a dear friend and past collaborator whose visionary work in using cutting-edge digital video projections to create abstract geologic representations is just downright cool, and breathtakingly beautiful.

Brad falls in love with the piece and uses a recorded accompaniment of Prospects for a multimedia installation, Lost in Deep Time, in Sun Valley, ID. 45^th Parallel also programs Prospects for a spring performance.

Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together – Spring ’23
Inspired by Brad’s critically acclaimed exhibit in Sun Valley, and our successful live performance of Prospects in PDX, we start musing about how it might work to do a concert version of the video with live music. Brad raises the stakes even higher by pitching a companion piece that will tell the tale of the Ice Age Missoula Floods, using music and visuals to explore the enigmatic landscapes that inspired the cataclysmic flood theory of J Harlan Bretz. The new companion piece will be called He Who Saw the Deep.

Scores of Scores – Summer ‘23 We have to keep the instrumentation within a string quartet roster, so Brad and I start compiling lists of our favorite composers whose music might fit the bill, narrowing it down to Anna Thorvaldsdottir (Iceland), György Ligeti (Hungary), inti figgis-vizueta (NYC), and Anna Meredith (UK).

The first half of the program features Andy’s Prospects of a Misplaced Year (2016), a five-movement tour de force for string quartet and piano that alternates between fast and slow music, with the pianist and cellist using putty and coins to extend the variety of sound colors available to those instruments.

Here’s the instruction page from Andy’s score for preparing the piano and cello for their extended techniques:

The programming for the second half of the concert features a wonderful mix of 20th and 21st century masterpieces:

Sonata for solo cello by György Ligeti (1948)
“It's a dialogue. Because it's like two people, a man and a woman, conversing. I used the C string, the G string and the A string separately... I had been writing much more “modern” music in 1946 and 1947, and then in ’48 I began to feel that I should try to be more “popular”... I attempted in this piece to write a beautiful melody, with a typical Hungarian profile, but not a folksong... or only half, like in Bartók or in Kodály – actually, closer to Kodály”

Sola by Anna Thorvaldsdottir (2019 - for solo viola and electronics)
“Sola is inspired by abstract structural elements of solitariness in midst of turmoil – by the desire of calm and focus in chaos. Focusing on intimate materials in a flowing progression that seethe under the surface of disruption, only occasionally observing elements from the surface.”

Haze and Chorale by Anna Meredith (2016 – for string quartet and electronics)
“For me the thing I think I do best – and I do lots of stuff badly – is pacing. I love the sense that you’re getting from A to B and contrasting it with C… So that sense of growth is what I enjoy in any type of music. Big builds, contrasts, odd switches in fields.”

the motion between three worlds by inti figgis-vizueta (2020 - for solo cello)
“the motion between three worlds draws inspiration from the transitional aspects of Spring, centering poetics of new growth, creation, and interconnectivity. The score behaves as a cosmological map, providing visual frameworks for navigation and movement between sets of given harmonic and timbral materials. The directionality of visual objects, lines of connectivity, and cosmological imagery help inform trajectories of transformation. The player is asked to ‘always be moving between.’’'

This is the actual musical score from which cellist Marilyn de Oliveira will be performing:

Fall ’23
The final pieces are selected, and Brad starts creating the videos, using existing recordings of the music as reference for the visuals. We realize right away that this will pose challenges for the live musicians to be in “sync” with the visuals (more on that later).

Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail - Winter ’23
Tracking down sheet music can often be quite a challenge. It’s either sold or rented, with an additional licensing fee to perform it with film. While the music for Prospects was already in hand, getting hold of the rest of the music proved to be difficult! In the case of the two Anna Meredith works (Haze & Chorale), they are originally scored for chamber orchestra, and had only recently been arranged for string quartet. But fortune shined on us, with our wonderful colleagues in the Ligeti Quartet (the arrangers and recording artists) and Faber Publishing stepping up to help us get the music in time. We are MOST grateful to them for the assist!

The Click and the Dead (that syncing feeling) – January ’24
Since Brad had created the videos using existing recordings, we then had to figure out how to make it possible for the instrumentalists to be in sync with the films. Thankfully, we had Danny Rosenberg come to our rescue, using a combination of click tracks (metronomes that we hear in headphones) and timers to allow us to stay in sync with the videos.

Rehearsals – Spring ’24
Scheduling rehearsals with five busy performing artists is a challenging prospect because of spring breaks, family responsibilities, and orchestra jobs. Our first rehearsal took place in mid-March at Yoko Greeney’s beautiful house, with the help of Andy himself! My dear friend Charles Noble describes what rehearsing with Andy is like in his blog post The Key to Akiho.

I’ll only add that rehearsing with Andy is exactly how I love to work. His energy and uncompromising rhythmic integrity are an inspiration!

Rehearsing with a click track in your ear is a different kind of process. It’s a common tool for film session work, and we often use a click with movie concerts with the orchestra. While it absolutely lines up the ensemble very quickly, it also can distract from listening to each other. I’ve learned to approach it like we’re playing with a really great drum set player on a pops show, one who’s keeping steady time and not giving in to the players at all in terms of tempo. With enough practice, we’ve been able to keep one ear on the click and the other ear on the other players, producing what we believe is a very good performance!

Nothing Left but to Perform It
With the performance fast approaching, we’re excited about having a full house for the show! The energy in the room will be palpable, and we hope the performance goes well.

There are other elements that are critical to a successful performance, including our volunteer ushers, and the technical brilliance of Steve Foster and his team from Really Big Video who make the visuals really pop on the screen. I also want to acknowledge our dear friend Danny Rosenberg, who designed the click track software, and more importantly the programming, to make the projected images work on the two screens.

I want to thank David Straub and his wonderful team at Straub Collaborative for allowing us to invade their space for this show. They are not only great to work with, the room we get to use is absolutely perfect for this type of show.

And finally, to Brad Johnson for creating such visionary visuals for this show. We’ve had a lot of fun over the years conspiring to reimagine how live performances can look and feel, with more projects to come!

What you’ll see and hear on April 12th is what happens when a group of music geeks get together and ask big questions about what is possible in live performance. Working with super talented collaborators like Brad, Danny, my colleagues in the band, and our exceptional executive director Lisa Lipton is a dream come true.

We hope that you enjoy the show…

Ron Blessinger
Concert Producer
Violinist, 45^th Parallel Universe