Phil Thomson, ComposerChoreographer extraordinaire Sara Coffin has uploaded a ‘trailer’ for her recent evening-length work Taking Your Experience for Mine, for which I wrote the music.
Category Archives: Contemporary Dance
Reflections on a successful show
Filed under Contemporary Dance, Thoughts
My show with Sara (‘taking your experience for mine’ at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, Apr 29 & 30) is over now. I’m a bit melancholy, as I always am when a major project finishes up, but I’m also glad of the opportunity and happy that I had a chance to work on it.
I think things went well. Attendance was very good on the Friday night, and it was a good, very supportive crowd. Attendance was down a little on Saturday, due to full-price tickets, but the crowd was still very receptive.
The show itself went well, aside from one or two very small hitches in the dance performances; I suppose that’s par for the course. The dancers really pulled things together in the last couple of weeks of rehearsals and are to be commended for all their efforts.
Considering all the technology involved, I am immensely grateful that the technology was not more problematic; we really dodged a bullet on that one!
I feel the dance itself was quite successful and this reviewer seems to agree for the most part. Sara did an amazing job on the choreography and the creative process. She is really developing a unique choreographic language and a distinct voice, and this, her first large-scale evening-length work, worked out quite well.
Most importantly for me, I am very happy about how the music came out. The music in this show was quite a departure for me, as it was much more beat-oriented than most of my music has been for the last 10 years or so. What I noticed was how different the level of enthusiasm was for the music from both the dancers and the audience. In the past, the compliments I have received on my music, whether for dance or for concerts, have tended to be polite and respectful; in this case, I sensed a high level of very genuine enthusiasm. (The word ‘awesome’ was used by at least 3 different people!) I suppose I have always known that rhythmic music is more accessible to general audiences, but this confirmed it for me.
And I feel happy about this enthusiasm because I know that I have earned it without ‘selling out’ as it were. The music for this piece was every bit as planned out, well-thought and composed as any of my other music has been. Further, the rhythmic language used in this work is very much my own, and while the work is heavily influenced by electronic dance music, it never lapses into an easy or stereotyped approach to rhythm. None of the music is in 4/4, and there is some music in which the rhythmic structure is so complex and there are so many contrasting rhythms going on at once, that I couldn’t even tell you what time signature(s) it’s in!
But despite this rhythmic complexity, the music is accessible enough for general audiences to respond to, which has me feel like this is a worthwhile musical direction to pursue in the future.
taking your experience for mine
Filed under Contemporary Dance, Music, Updates
Tagged as contemporary dance, music, Phil Thomson, Sara Coffin, ScotiaBank Dance Centre, Vancouver
Tagged as contemporary dance, music, Phil Thomson, Sara Coffin, ScotiaBank Dance Centre, Vancouver
I have been working on music for a dance piece by Sara Coffin, a recent winner of the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award. The work is called taking your experience for mine, and performances are coming up at the ScotiaBank Dance Centre on April 29 & 30. Tickets are $15 on April 29 (International Dance Day!) and $25 & $18 on the 30th. You can book online!
Working with Sara is always a treat, and we have worked together many times in the past. Our collaboration this time has been a lot more ‘hands-off’ than usual, due to my busy schedule, but once in a while I get to hang out in the studio with Sara and the dancers, which is where I belong after all!
The music for this work is a bit of a departure for me, in that a lot of it is quite beat-oriented. I have done the odd beat-oriented thing in the past, mostly when writing for dance, but most of the choreography seemed to demand a more hip and ‘electronica’-type score. I’ve really enjoyed getting in touch with my inner electronica artist, though this music is quite a bit more rhythmically complex than most of the ‘four-on-the-floor’ electronic music out there.
Sara’s choreography is developing quite nicely. She has always had a nice movement vocabulary in her shorter works, and it’s nice to see her stretch out into an evening-length work. I think she’s doing a great job of tackling a lot of the formal problems that such a work entails.
I hope you can make it out to the show if you are in town!
taking your experience for mine. Choreography by Sara Coffin. Music by Phil Thomson.
Introduction
Filed under About Phil, Contemporary Dance, Music
Tagged as composer for contemporary dance, Phil Thomson, Vancouver
Tagged as composer for contemporary dance, Phil Thomson, Vancouver
Phil Thomson is a Vancouver-based composer of experimental electronic music. His music has been released on labels around the world, broadcast on CBC, and heard in concert in Canada, the US and abroad. He has written music for dance by several choreographers, most notably Sara Coffin. His writings have been published online and by Cambridge University Press.
He composed the music for Sara Coffin’s evening-length work taking your experience for mine.
Working with choreographer James Gnam, he composed the music for Gnam’s endORPHIN, performed by the plastic orchid factory.
In residence at the Ross Creek Arts Centre, he produced the music for How Much Is Too Much? by SINS, choreographed by Sara Coffin. He has also produced music for Coffin’s bOdYbOUnd and an untitled dance by Jennifer Clarke.
He was commissioned by Vancouver New Music to present a piece in their festival of music by John Cage.
Phil completed his MFA at SFU in 2005. His graduating project, Machine Languages, was presented at Video In (now VIVO).
Phil has also written music for acoustic instruments. These works have been heard at the Sonic Boom Festival in Vancouver and elsewhere.
Phil is always on the lookout for opportunities to collaborate with other artists in any media. Though he prefers face-to-face collaborations, Internet-based collaborations are also a possibility. If you are interested in working with him, please drop him a line.
