Rusty Banks is a composer/guitarist/teacher originally from Jasper, AL, now living in Pennsylvania.
His compositions benefit from themes relating to regions or environments. For example, his composition commissioned by the Alabama Music Teacher Association's 2004 convention featured audio samples from the Cahaba River, Alabama's last free-flowing river. Another work, "Long Pine Creek: New Year's Day," uses sounds from Long Pine Creek in Nebraska. His compositions range from traditional concert music to sonic installations where boom boxes are scattered throughout a room. His music is described as thoroughly modern, yet accessible, a description he shudders at, but reluctantly accepts. His compositions may be heard on Living Artist Recordings, as well as his web site, rustybanks.org.
In my last post, I discussed collaborative works. These works tend to be 3-D in nature, with performers and visuals in one area and boomboxes throughout the space. This creates a sonically rich environment with which audiences (even traditional ones) seem to meaningfully connect. I love the fact that these works can’t be recreated in an mp3, but on the other hand, the further from convention a work is, the more a working composer needs adequate documentation.
Who out there has seen brilliant strategies in documenting multi-media (hate that word) works? I love the fluidity of YouTube, but I’m talking more high-quality. DVDs seem a good choice since they have surround sound and video. Who’s seen this done (well)?
Consider the documentation below (done in the typical post-grant-report fashion) of an installation Scott M. Conard (video artist) and I did in the vestibule of a St. James Episcopal Church in Lancaster, PA before a new music concert. It’s based on a poem called World’s End. And Worlds Begin by Richard Miller. There are some nice visuals, and you can sorta tell what it sounded like, but trust me:
