|
AFTER DEVILS NIGHT
"After Devil's Night" is a new work by composer Warn Defever written expressly for the ASM chamber music group and its based on the belief in an unseen power beneath the life and movement in all nature: the shapeless shape, the formless form. Instead of focusing on the quiet unconscious process of birds singing, suns shining, or clouds distributing rain, this piece explores the musical / political landscape of the city of Detroit and how its drifted along seemingly without goals and purpose for over thirty years. New music in this bleak urban wasteland from the late 1960's until now has inexplicably grown along side extreme political ideologies from avante-jazz groups like Griot Galaxy or the Tribe record label to techno pioneers like Underground Resistance. Just as water overcomes obstacles in its path by flowing around them, these revolutionary political theories and musical performances are practiced unconsciously as spontaneous expressions without desire or real purpose.
ASM CHAMBER ENSEMBLE presents
AFTER DEVILS NIGHT by Warn Defever
Saturday 17 September 2005
La Tea at the Clemente Soto Velez Center
107 Suffolk Street, NYC 8:00 PM
 Each musician in the ensemble is presented with a box. Each box contains a disc of demos, another disc marked "references," bamboo, a bell, a candle, the musical score, two pages of general directions, and a list of raw
materials required to perform the piece.
 A page titled RAW MATERIALS includes twenty three numbered "requirements" including,
1. candles / dimly lit stage
3. cloud amplifier (provided)
6. string quartet (cello, viola, violin, violin)
10. "Detroit's average population since the 1960's has decreased by 10,000 people per year."
16. each movement corresponds with a season (winter, spring, summer, fall)
21. "DEVIL'S NIGHT is a great annual tradition that normally sees kids soaping neighbor's windows and other harmless pranks, but
in the city of Detroit it has become a testament to the extreme nature of the city and its place in post industrialized society.
Hundreds of homes, cars, and businesses are burned down every October 30th. The arsonists frequently target abandoned homes
or old cars that the city has refused to tear down or remove, and each year the city government announces a decrease in the
number of crimes that night, but is only able to do so by re-defining what exactly is considered "arson" each year. "
 directions page one
 directions page two
 handmade bamboo tool made by hitoko for writing the musical score
 closeup of bamboo tool
 raw materials
 first movement PEOPLES ARMY
 second movement LAO ISSARA
 third movement DEVILS DEVILS NIGHT
 fourth movement SILVER MAKEUP
 box contents
 disk of recordings to be played through small cloud amplifier
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)