an UN-typical day in the life of Shawn

Today I went to San Francisco. This in itself is cool but not particularly noteworthy. I've been to SF four or five times over the past couple months for various reasons, and one of those reasons culminated in what I did today.

The story actually begins sometime this summer. I was listening to KDFC, the bay area classical station, and heard about this project called the Crissy Broadcast. It was a giant music collaboration with music written by an active, current composer, Lisa Bielawa. Finding out that the event was open to volunteer musicians, I checked it out and notified my friend Dana who, being very much into contemporary and current classical music, jumped on the opportunity. I joined as well, and long story short, drove over this morning to SF.

The event happened on Crissy field. There were upwards of 500, 600-something music makers together. A wonderful variety of groups were in volved: high school orchestras, bands, a drum corps, choirs, amateurs, professionals, young, old, and everything inbetween.  What happened was each group got music that was split into sections of musical phrases. Given the wide variety of ensembles there were many different portions of music. A few groups had much of the same music, but the timing and order was often different.
Between sections, many of the groups would move to a different location on the field. All groups started in the middle, but gradually expanded and moved around the field, often crossing paths.
There were call and response sections, alternating themes, competitions, exclamations, moans, wails shrieks... you get the idea. One band formed a diagonal line across the field, passing a phrase down the line with each person playing it once. There was a "chase" where one group played a section of music, and two or three other groups walked over and joined in, only to have the first group leave and move to a different location, only to be chased again. This happened 3-4 times at the end of the piece.

Overall it was a fun experience. The music was simple, but put together in an interesting way. There were friends and family in the field, following along as they could, and of course there were also many other people walking through and around, asking questions, and listening. I'm glad I did it.
Hooray for music and people and San Francisco!