A MOWN LAWN, named after a Lydia Davis short story, is a chamber group exploring several issues surrounding chamber performance and composition. Originally formed in 2007 as a quintet with voice, viola, cello, baritone saxophone/bass clarinet, and trumpet, the group has gone through several formulations to end up at its current all-wind instrumentation: voice (Judith Berkson), trombone (Curtis Hasselbring), bassoon (Katie Young), baritone saxophone/bass clarinet (Josh Sinton), and trumpet. The ensemble plays compositions derived from novels, emergency signs, speeches, or whatever seems workable. I’m not really interested in songwriting as such; rather, I’m more interested in playing with the structure of songs: emptying or adding emotional content to assorted lyrics, hovering around the point where chamber vocal performance turns into theater, and so on. All of these scores utilize graphic or other open scoring techniques to try to keep text and sound on the same plane, with neither “serving” the other.
Some samples from our upcoming album, recorded at Peter Karl Studios in Brooklyn:
- The Silence of Mrs Iln (text: Lydia Davis)
- “And the poor lousy old earth…” (text: Samuel Beckett)
- 1127 – Soft as the massacre of Suns (text: Emily Dickinson)
One Response to “A Mown Lawn”
on December 13th, 2010 at 21:46 #
[...] and McGill University. Wick currently leads two groups in New York – hungry cowboy and A Mown Lawn – and co-leads White Rocket, a trio with Dublin-based performer/composers Greg Felton and Seán [...]