Autum Casey and Jeff Morris, professors in the Department of Performance Studies, were awarded third prize at the Music in Architecture-Architecture in Music Symposium on October 19.
Casey and Morris traveled to Austin with a team of students to perform their work titled “Research Embodied” at the Great Hall of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. Their performance was one of eight finalist performances in the competition, which is an exploration of the relationship between music and architecture through performance.
Casey led the Texas A&M group in the interpretation of the Great Hall’s architectural space in order for them to create a visual and acoustic performance that embodied the library’s structure.
“We took inventory of the things we could do and tried to assemble them in a meaningful form,” Morris said.
The limestone walls were fundamental in the design of the project, because they caused sounds to reverberate. Casey and Morris quickly realized that an individual could not enter the Great Hall without being a part of the performance, so they set out to gather samples of sounds that occur naturally at the library, such as opening and closing books and typing on a keyboard. The footsteps of student performers became the percussive backbone for the piece, composed by Morris.
“When you’re in a space like that, your footsteps automatically make you present and turn you into a performer,” Casey said.
Eight theatre and music students helped the professors with the project design and performed the piece at the symposium as musicians and actors.
Lee Barker, a junior theatre arts major, played a researcher at the library. He said that he was very inspired by the ways the other finalists approached the symposium’s challenge and found the opportunity to be truly unique.
“The opportunities given to me by the department let me try things that I don’t think I would get anywhere else,” Barker said.
Shelby Shelton, a junior music and English literature double major, was glad for the opportunity because it allowed her to see the arts from a different perspective.
“I feel that being a music student at Texas A&M, I am given a lot of interesting opportunities for performance that are far more non-traditional than at other universities,” Shelton said.
For “Research Embodied,” Shelton performed on a computer keyboard that tuned each key stroke to a certain chromatic pitch and that cued changes in the other performers’ instruments. She said she appreciated the way Morris and Casey’s project design made the technology and architecture of the library blend together so well in the performance.
The experience allowed Morris and Casey to integrate their respective disciplines, music and theatre, in a way that was unprecedented for both of them. And by exposing students to an environment that brought together the different art forms of music and architecture, Morris and Casey were able to teach them an important lesson in innovative thinking. Casey said that by having them be a part of the planning process, the students were presented with valuable critical thinking and collaborative skills.
“They need to be performing,” Morris said. “We create those opportunities.”
Morris was glad to see students learn in a setting outside of the classroom. He said that participating in the piece was an integral part of the learning process for students because there are things about the field which need to be experienced firsthand for full comprehension.
“It’s a competitive environment,” Morris said. “We liked the concept we had for this piece, and we’re glad we got to pursue it.”
