Timara breakin' new ground

Daniel Herman

Forget everything you know about TIMARA. Wednesday's concert broke new ground, literally, with the typical electronica-based compositions and old school break dancing.

The TIMARA department had its first concert in front of a sizable audience in Warner Concert Hall last Wednesday. The program featured a variety of influences and styles.

"The TIMARA concerts were really intellectual and serious," said sophomore Corey Arcangel.

"Something had to change." Davis finished.

The show opened with Davis's "TIMARA Is In The House," a piece performed on a MegaMouth, a voice distortion and sound effects device which can be purchased at your local toy store. As Davis sat on stage and played, sophomore Cory Arcangel did choreographed squat thrusts.

"We really wanted to do something just for the TIMARA department," Arcangel said.

Davis concluded, "It was hip and it was hype and we thought it would really get the crowd fired up at the concert."

One of the more well received pieces was sophomore Jonathon Simon's "...from indeterminacy..." This John Cage-inspired piece featured Sophocles Papavasilopoulus OC '97 reading a story from Cage's Indeterminacy backed by various samples. "It's very relaxed, it's not insane," Simon said of the piece.

Perhaps the highlight of the evening was sophomore Rob Reich's "The Well," performed by the composer at a piano and accompanied by a tape. "It started as a visual image I had of the sound falling into a puddle of water and waves coming out from it," he said. As he hit the sometimes-single notes they almost transformed into the billowy tape samples.

After some technical difficulties, the show came to an end with sophomore Orion Keyser's video, "Abstraction and Waltz," the images of which consisted of different digital distortions of a single still image.

Soundscapes were common among the works, including first-year Christian Potter's "RAZAAB." An experiment to find a flowing piece with sets of three piano notes over a fluid low electronics.

Some of the pieces were also exercises in serendipity. Sophomore Kendra Juul's "Code Blue" was written via improvisation in one session on one synthesizer, while sophomore Kristen Waite's "Improv For Fergie" got its main samples from when her roommate was fooling around with his turntable. "I wouldn't have gone after voices," said Waite, "I used them because they were there."

The show, however, was best summed up by sophomore Jon Brooks when he said of his piece "Layers," "It's just music."