“The Grand Piano continues to amaze”
– David Meltzer
Berkeley & San Francisco Performances
The Grand Piano performed at the University of California Berkeley in
the Holloway Poetry Reading Series on November 18th 2011:
Two days later, we performed at California College of the Arts in Small
Press Traffic's reading and performance series. Eight of the ten Grand Piano
authors participated in the performances –
Rae Armantrout, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Mandel,
Ted Pearson, Kit Robinson, and Barrett Watten.
Both performances included substantial discussion with and among the authors
and audience. At the University of California, poet Jasper Bernes facilitated discussion.
Bay Area writer David Buuck led the discussion at the Small Press
Traffic event.
The Score
The performance score was created especially for these events by Carla Harryman
and Ted Pearson and is available
to download as a pdf file. Organized musically, it enacts both polyphonic
and individual soundings drawn from The Grand Piano books.
The score includes solo sections, 2-person scripted dialogues, and structured
group improvisation. Its affordances and constraints provide each participant
multiple ways to devise her own script and interact with collaborators in
performance with temporal precision. Download the score.
