The Ties That Connect Us David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg on Breath & Hammer II
With these two performances in Berlin, we premiere a greatly expanded version of our Breath & Hammer program, designed specifically for the Pierre Boulez Saal and its unique in-the-round configuration. Using newly composed, spatialized surround-sound interludes as well as new visuals produced and performed live by Jesse Gilbert, we have tried to create an immersive evening that envelops the audience in an array of sound and images. The starting point was the core material of our preexisting Breath & Hammer project, which is made up of our arrangements of songs given to us by composers and artists we tremendously admire, who are also friends and close associates. The program includes pieces by creators as diverse as New York–based visionary John Zorn, Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, and Cuban percussionist Roberto Juan Rodríguez, as well as our own original compositions that contain influences ranging from interlocking drumming patterns to Romantic symphonic music, to minimalism and klezmer. We find that these diverse and seemingly disparate musical influences intermingle and are transformed into something entirely new. The project has grown steadily in increments since 2015. After initially creating the music, we decided to add video. Since much of the piano playing is done inside the instrument and the clarinet playing employs unorthodox techniques, the original idea to include video projections was formulated to help bring the process of the creation of our sound world closer to the audience by showing them exactly how the sounds are being created in real time. That led to our meeting with Jesse Gilbert in 2016, when we asked him to design a portable video system for our shows using three interactive cameras. We have travelled with this design for our performances of this project to date. 15
