Output details

Hi Hat and Me

Research content/process:

5 minute work for solo percussionist. First performed by Serge Vuille at the National Gallery (London) with over twenty-five subsequent performances by seven percussionists in Australia, France, Peru, Portugal, Switzerland, UK as well as being broadcast twice in ABC Classic FM and released on the Tall Poppies label. This work is for a soloist who vocalizes whilst performing hi-hat. Building upon the Instrumental Theatre concept of composer Mauricio Kagel, this work is not ‘music theatre’, but rather explores theatricality within the concert hall context (a theatre of music making). The departure point for the vocal part and its relationship with the instrumental part is that of the hi-hat being coupled with the percussionist’s voice mimicking the sound of the hi-hat; this notion of mimicking is later expanded as the voice represents other sounds such as military and animal sounds. The performer also uses numbers to rhythmically label the different kinds of sounds you can make on a hi-hat and in one passage the performer ‘commands’ the hi-hat with the spoken words ‘open’ and ‘closed’ (referring to the two states of the hi-hat). There are two more expansive textual parts. The first is an autobiographical moment where the percussionist is asked to present an anecdote relating to when they were seven years old. This moment attempts to show the percussionist’s ‘own’ voice and ‘reveal’ them as a person with a life history. The final part of the work rhythmically presents a list of figures of speech we have with the number 8 (e.g. 8 bits to a byte, 8 states border Missouri etc.) Finally, an overarching issue is the attempt to make a work that is both conceptually engaging whilst also being light, humorous and even flippant in tone.