Benoit Montambault – Stop Making Sense (2012)
Instrumentation: ● Marimba
● Assorted metals
● Assorted electronics
● (See Video for additional guidance)
Duration: 10 minutes Composer’s Note:
Stop Making Sense is the piece that helped me redefine my work as a composer and sound artist. It was written on the initiative of percussionist Galdric Subirana who was looking for a piece that would join dance and music in a novel way, a piece where dance and music would become one while each conserving their distinct identites. Around a modified marimba filled with nothing more than D flats a percussionist strikes a note. Its resonance is then cut off by the dancer. What follows is a game of didactics where the dancer force the percussionist to modify his approach to the instrument by taking over the physical space of said instrument. Stop wants to tell a story, that of two people living in independent worlds yet bound by a common physical reality, a reality that both enables and challenges communication.
A true game of cat and mouse, Stop Making Sense is a hybrid where dance cannot truly retain its intended identiry and where music cannot, at any time, exist outside of dance.
-Benoit Montambault
Annotated by Joanna Chen