About
Zodiacrobatic is an evening-length remix/arrangement of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Tierkreis (Melodies of the Zodiac). These melodies were first composed for Stockhausen’s work Music Im Bauch (1975) in which the melodies are played by 6 percussionists or by music boxes contained in the belly of a birdman. Stockhausen also made a score of the music box melodies available to be arranged for any instrument or group of instruments. For years I have wanted to make an arrangement of these pieces but the timing and situations never worked out quite right. Stockhausen has always both fascinated and frightened me. As a performer reading one of his scores, I got the distinct sense that he was an overbearing control freak. I imagined that after not holding a dotted-eighth note long enough, he would somehow hunt me down and berate me publicly. Yet I was in awe that he could turn these qualities of exactness, precision, and scrupulousness—a type of control in music composition usually leading to negligible sonic results—into meaningful and emotional pieces of music.
Stockhausen was also not very interested in beat-based or repetitive music, famously referring to Aphex Twin’s work as “dancing bar music.” So the idea of creating a version, or “remix”, of his Zodiac melodies, which will certainly contain some beat-based and repetitive elements, seemed fun in the way that playing a joke on someone who doesn’t like jokes is sometimes fun.
Zodiacrobatic is scored for the duo Hybrid Groove Project, which for this project consists of myself on soprano, alto, baritone, and bass saxophones, toy piano, electric guitar, slide whistle, synthesizer, and percussion and Erik Spangler on melodica, theremin, recorders, KAOSS pad, synthesizer, percussion, turntables, and live sampling via Ableton Live. The piece will also be performed with live video mixing by video artist Jon Bevers