Musicians perform off-the-cuff drum circle on SU quad
Musicians from across the state gathered on the Syracuse University Quad for the first New York State performance of “Inuksuit” to happen outside of New York City Sunday.
The piece, composed by Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams, is environment-inspired, and reflects Adams’s belief in the connection between music and nature. It has been performed over 100 times on five different continents.
The performance was presented by the Society for New Music, as a celebration of its 45th anniversary.
The set-up was interesting in that there was not a specified stage for the performers or place for the audience. People sat on the stairs of Hendricks Chapel or in lawn chairs around the quad while others migrated around it during the almost 90-minute performance.
Attendees ranged from toddlers to senior citizens from all over New York State and virtually everything in between. Although the performance yielded a considerable and diverse turnout, those in attendance remained relatively silent and observant of the performance.
Every person for the piece was a soloist — no two people played the same part in the set. Although there was no palpable rhythm to the average ear, the musicians incorporated a group system to create signals. There were three groups with three respective leaders to chief cues and keep the piece going.
The performance was actually created mainly through email threads due to the vast ensemble.
“We actually never rehearsed this piece — not once,” said Charles Van Tassel, a music composition major and student representative for the Society for New Music. “We just got the parts, got the instructions, and met about an hour beforehand to discuss how it was going to be put together.”
The intergenerational ensemble consisted of 82 people from various cities and colleges across the state, including SU and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. The performance began with the musicians in the center of the quad and they slowly worked their way outward to occupy its perimeter.
The Inuit term “Inuksuit,” plural from “Inukshuk,” represented how the Inuit people in Alaska created stone figures to portray humans as a hunting method. Although the piece is inspired by Inuit society, the instruments used by the musicians were from a variety of cultures.
“I played something that a Chinese student had brought over, a small ceramic instrument. There were Tibetan Prayer Stones, Tibetan cymbals, everyone was using different things,” said Neva Pilgrim, a founding member of the Society for New Music.
Other instruments include Javanese gamelans, African, Native American and Indian drums, piccolos, and even a World War II vintage siren. This array of seemingly small instruments came together to transform the quad into what felt like a rich and wild nature scene.