This piece was sampled from voice memos made by my friend Robert MacCready and his grandfather Robert Moore, aka “RM”, as they travelled through Europe.
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I attended a 4pm performance of Polyorchard on Saturday, April 15th, 2017 at Glenwood Community Bookshop in Greensboro, NC.
This small bookshop is located in a commercial strip deep in Glenwood neighborhood. It’s one of those places where usually there are just houses, but some quirk of zoning has a small strip of shops and some industrial looking buildings.
I arrived a little early to check with David that my camera wouldn’t distract the performers. Once confirmed, I sat near the back of the book stuffed room. I know there were book sections by subject, but it was often too much to take in. I saw titles jump out, and little else for the forest of book spines. The performers were ranged in a semi-circle down the room facing the audience.
The start was a brief introduction by David Menestres, founder of Polyorchard. Then he pointed at one of the performers and the performance began…
There was a volley of musical outbursts and sound effects using objects (like a balloon), tapping on instruments, scratching, even weird animal like noises that bleated from a trumpet. The overall effect of the improvisational sounds was being in a random environment that wasn’t truly random. Each piece had a definite start towards an arrival that concluded.
This iteration of Polyorchard is…
Antonion Albanese – guitars
Laurent Estoppey – saxophones
Anne Gillot – bass clarinet, recorder
Michael Thomas Jackson – clarinet
Bill McConaghy – trumpet
David Menestres – bass
Noelle Reymond – bass
Antonion, Anne, & Noelle are members of ensemBle baBel from Switzerland (so is Laurent, but he lives in Greensboro now).
David Menestres is the founder/leader of the Polyorchard ensemble. David is a bassist, composer, and writer currently living in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
[See image gallery at brandonpierce.net](to inquire about use of any of these photos, please CONTACT me to make arrangements)
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Activate emotions, emotions activate… Learning to control emotional states.
In 1755 Lisbon, Portugal, three waves of earthquake struck just off the coast creating a tsunami that washed over the ports. The disaster hit around 9am in the morning on All Saints Day. Many of the citizens were in Churches for the holiday sermons. The timbers shaken loose fell on the votive candles, burning many of those not initially crushed in the fall.
Lisbon was rebuilt in the town planning of the Enlightenment through an unprecedented cooperation of nations across Europe.
From tadpole to frog… March of the Tadpole.
Sonic Foundry made a software called Acid, which was one of the first digital looping softwares I learned. rats on ACID is the story of mice lost in a maze while under the influence of LSD. Yes I know, very Timothy Leary and all that…
Assembled in Cakewalk, this story is the telling of the overwhelming power of the computer, the huge variety of options. No instruments were used in this piece, the piece is entirely constructed from found sounds – mostly the sounds of children and playgrounds.
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