This January 17th and 18th, we’re bringing you an audacious new work – The Space Between – composed by Lisa R. Coons in collaboration with director Mark DeChiazza and the Quartet. Professor Coons is on faculty at Western Michigan University, where we’ve witnessed her outstanding pedagogy, but perhaps more importantly (to us), she is an insightful, highly-intelligent, and generous artist.
Let’s be clear: The Space Between is a daring bit of business. It includes staging, blocking, lighting, extra-extra-extended techniques, and a massive amount of memorization. And the inspiration for the work surrounds the kaleidoscopic, and often complicated, nature of relationships. The truly beautiful thing about this almost 3-year-long project, though, is the way each artist involved ultimately shaped the piece. This is true collaboration.
Here’s what Lisa has to say…
Doyle Armbrust: We’ve been lucky enough to have years to develop The Space Between with you. How has the piece transformed since you first conceived of it?
Lisa Coons: You’re right – the work has evolved incredibly from those initial sketches! And I think that's less about the time it took and much more about the process of workshopping and collaborating with all of you; the structure is completely revamped, the materials morphed and grew (and were often discarded), and some ideas created in the workshops became integral to the piece. Perhaps the biggest change is in how I see the material: the gestures and sections started out meaning something specific (and quite personal). As you all developed them with your own bodies and instruments, and through exploration with Mark DeChiazza, these elements grew and stopped being so singular. They now feel multidimensional and inspire a much more complex read – still personal, but encompassing something more than my personal narratives. That has both been exciting and really difficult for me, as I try to work with material that has grown more complex, less linear, and often even changed meaning significantly from when I first started creating it.
DA: Writing a piece that upends the expectation of a string quartet sitting in traditional formation turns out to be quite startling, and maybe even shocking. Do you see yourself (and your work) as a risk-taker? Is that a priority for you?
LC: I think it’s more that the work I make doesn’t often fit well in the traditional concert hall. Maybe I don’t fit either. I grew up on a farm in the Midwest, where much of life is manual labor. So I think that for me the physical is still intrinsically tied to the real, the honest. And while I realize that the type of embodied gesture I am working with isn’t common practice for most musicians, it doesn't feel shocking to me, it just feels more sincere, maybe even more whole. Pitches and rhythms seem to ring hollow without the visual element of the musician’s body working to draw them from the instrument. And embracing the implications of those visceral elements in communicating within an ensemble – the intimacy, the brutality, the interference and collaboration – seems like the most genuine way to really make something communicative. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the challenges of making work like this (or that I overlook what it asks of my collaborators), it’s just that the goal for me is always to get closer to that ideal, not to get further from the norms.
The Space Between is unique in its interruptions, alliances, and its points of connection…especially as we interact with each others instruments. (Photo by Daniel Kullman for Bitter Jester Studios)
DA: Is this your first time working with a director? What has surprised you about a three-way collaboration vs. the usual commission-piece-deliver-piece dynamic?
LC: This is my first time collaborating with a director, but after this experience I intend to keep working like this (and with Mark specifically!) whenever possible. I’ve spent much of my career trying to figure out how to create embodied work effectively, and regularly failing to do so. So Mark is even more than a co-creator; he often acted as translator for me when I was too close to explain ideas objectively, or when I didn’t know how to invite you all into the physical/aural motives. The most important lesson I learned from him is that the desired gesture (what I hope will be recognizable from an audience’s perspective) isn’t always the primary element to communicate to performers – building a system of interactions often creates a much more complete and evocative result. What’s more, this mode of collaborative discovery genuinely engages the power dynamics that are central to my current work, rather than merely trying to act them out or convey them abstractly. So a foundational element of my work has changed through the course of this project.
DA: One of my favorite aspects of this piece, besides getting to commandeer Russ's cello with my bow, is the whiplash between tonality (or what is traditionally thought of as "beautiful") and that of areas in which crunch and aggressiveness are the focus. Are you bookending something here, celebrating the beauty of both approaches, or something else entirely?
LC: Thank you! I map materials as spectra: gritty to crystalline timbres, effortless to effortful gestures, dissonance to consonance. They don’t actually occupy different spaces, but movement along each continuum drives development and creates emotional arcs. And you’re right, I do love the beauty of crunchy, aggressive noise just as much as delicate, open harmonies, so the extremes of the spectra are often given fairly equal places of honor in my pieces. But this is the first and only piece that has ever had that many people bowing a single cello at once.
DA: It's been quite a journey, this piece. I can't wait to get it in front of an audience with you!
LC: I’m so excited that we’re finally putting it all together! And maybe just a little bit terrified…ok, a lot terrified. Um, didn’t I see that there’s a bar in front of Steppenwolf…?