Modest Proposals, Ben McDonnell

An immersive piece of music for tone generators, drum kit, guitar and electric bass. Modest Proposals was written for the JEMP festival and makes use of a blend of improvisation and written material making use of graphic scores to consider how musicians can work together within a fixed structure. 

Ben’s last work The Sound We Inhabit was based around the dissonance between his desire for quick, responsive and temporary architectures and the need for longer term stability and support. Focusing on sound and music as a form that is both inhabitable but inherently amorphous and temporary, the work was context contingent. The space it is performed in influencuences note choices, pitch interaction and duration.

Modest Proposals work along similar themes but will consider sound as a temporal sculpture, reacting to the space it is performed in but also the formal properties of sound itself. Two tone generators will play pitches that interact and cause ‘beating’; the audible pulse created by the sound waves hitting each other in the space. The drummer will take this beating as a pulse and use it to stimulate a series of improvisations with the ensemble. An important aspect of the work is the installation elements that Ben incorporates into the piece, these can take the form of large scale temporary structures that help tune the space, stools, music stands and other support structures for the performers and graphic scores used to communicate the work to the musicians. Modest Proposals is site contingent and will respond to the resonant space of the Swiss Church.