Free Radicals

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Artist:
Collaboration

Title:
Free Radicals

Genre:
Non-traditional Didjeridu

Publisher No.:
(1997) Black Sun - BS 15027 , Black Sun Music, PO Box 30122, Tucson, AZ 30122 USA

Comments:
From the dance production by choreographer Graeme Murphy and The Sydney Dance Company, FREE_RADICALS emerged in a most surprising way. The music envisioned would be performed by three percussionists on stage with the dancers who interact (in addition to their movement) with vocals and additional percussion. When the work began, there was no score, just the musicians and the dancers. Askill, Low Choy and Eddington were creatively challenged with minimal instrumentation to produce new music at maximum speed and to find within themselves sufficient variety and invention to sustain a full evening production. Askill accomplished this by finding a common rhythmic language for both the dancers and musicians using number systems. This can be quite confusing in an environment based entirely on rhythm without obvious melody. These number systems became the basis for much of the music of FREE_RADICALS and the key for real interaction between the dancers and musicians. The title words, free and radical, are intended to capture the wildness of the music and dance. "The percussion is like the skeleton of the synchronized moments, you feel like the dancers are like little speakers, generating the sound that comes flying out of them," says Murphy. In this CD version of FREE_RADICALS David Hudson presents improvisations as an alternative to the choreographed interaction of the original stage version. The choice of didgeridoo may at first seem strange, yet Hudson (himself a dancer) is a master of an instrument which is arguably as old or even older than the drum. His improvisations on didgeridoo propel and embellish while (like a dancer) his vocalizations and chants create new forms and shapes.
Reviewer: Black Sun