The Paul Dresher Ensemble Production of
Schick Machine
with Steven Schick
Composed by Paul Dresher
“He [Dresher] has created a fresh, inventive, exciting, hip and immediately appealing yet carefully composed, thoroughly thought-out and seemingly spontaneous music that shows musical boundaries to be as artificial as the Berlin Wall.”
-Mark Swed, L.A. Weekly
“Steven Schick is a wizard, a master, a roshi of percussion. Schick turns percussion into a benign and exquisitely elegant form of martial art. The intensity and commitment are palpable, breathtaking.”
-The Advertiser (Adelaide, Australia)
As part of his Guggenheim Fellowship for 2006-2007 and with the support of Meet the Composer and additional commissioning funds from Stanford Lively Arts, Paul Dresher is creating an evening-length solo music theater work for percussionist Steven Schick using large-scale invented musical instruments. The work will be presented at the Mondavi Center, Stanford Lively Arts and UC, San Diego. Virtuoso percussionist Steven Schick has long been bringing considerable theatrical skills into his performances, and here will perform on a stage whose every object and surface is sonically active. The instruments will combine both traditional percussion and new large-scale instruments that Dresher will invent and build specifically for this composition.
...a new realm of choreographic, sculptural and theatrical engagement.
The environment of the new work will enhance Schick's physical performance known for its theatricality as much as its musicality. Steven has always thought that percussion is as much about the movements and performance energies of the player as it was about the exploration of new sounds. Drawing on Dresher's long involvement with both theatrical pieces and instrument building, and with the great tradition in mind of West Coast composer/instrument builders like Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, John Cage and Robert Erickson (who was Paul's primary composition teacher), they propose to extend the latest percussion sounds, performance aesthetics and instruments into a new realm of choreographic, sculptural and theatrical engagement.
