The musicians scattered around the former elementary school gymnasium didn’t look like an ordinary orchestra, nor did they sound like one. A woman in plaid and high-top Converse sneakers played her banjo with a brush while the warm sounds of cellos and violins intermingled with the sharper tones of an accordion and melodica to create a polyphonic drone. Joining forces, a small chorus sang a traditional folk tune, the words changed to reference Kansas and the tallgrass prairie. The performance, which took place on a recent Saturday in the small town of Matfield Green, was led by Clay Gonzalez, a young, Michigan-based composer who creates what he calls “radically inclusive, site-specific immersions” – orchestral soundscapes in which all the musicians are everyday people. “The whole crux of it is that we invite community members to directly participate in these events. Anyone can join,” Gonzalez says. Gonzalez had composed the music for the performance that day while a resident of the Tallgrass Artist Residency, which for the past 10 years has brought painters, poets, photographers, filmmakers, writers and others to this remote pocket of the Flint Hills. Each summer, the program hosts eight to 10 artists, and then puts on what it calls the Fall Gathering, a daylong event where that year’s artists are invited to give talks or present their work. (Such was the occasion for Gonzalez’s performance.)
Read more: KLC Journal
