by Rachel Staggs

The Festival

Jason Phelps has created an event that will fill your every desire for improvisational performance art. The Sound & Vision Festival supports multi-disciplinary stage work and presents some of Austin's finest performers.

Sound & Vision '99 spotlights El Nino Mon Amour (or "Sex and Weather in Texas") written and choreographed by Margery Segal. Segal and Phelps perform in this multi-faceted dance/movement piece, directed by Ruth Margraff.

El Nino Mon Amour begins with Margery Segal and Jason Phelps curled up on a table together, feet to feet. As their whispers become louder the movement begins. Almost surreal, the movements that take Segal off of the table are entrancing. Segal is an incredible performer with a wide range of movement and expression. Throughout the piece there is a steady rise and fall of energy. There is laughter, there is singing, beautiful movement, eerie looks, vegetables hanging from the ceiling. I can almost feel the dust storms of West Texas with Phelps swaying like a tree in a strong wind and the sun colored lights casting a warm glow across the stage. Segal's hair and make-up artistically create a mood. At times the performers appear otherworldly, with Segal crawling across the floor like a serpent and Phelps creating intense facial expressions. During the entire piece the shadows cast upon the wall by the performers are visually delicious. Near the end, the shadows cast by the hanging vegetables appear ethereal. The beautiful blue lights casting that shadow bring the audience out into space.

Aesthetically, the lighting design, music composition, and costume design are pleasing. Creatively, they are an important part of the whole. Music composed by Jim (Phylr) Coleman keeps the piece flowing and brings out the emotions underlying each scene. Coleman, who was a major force behind the New York band Cop Shoot Cop, often scores music for film, theater and dance. Stephen Pruitt's lighting plays a key role in this work of art. Pruitt shines fantastic colors and striking imagery onto the white walls that surround the stage.

This festival also spotlights Walter Thompson's Sound Painting. Imagine tenor sax, baritone sax, clarinet, piano, guitar, percussion, vocalists, actors, dancers, and samples from Jim Coleman, all conducted by a series of gestures. Add visual/scenic video from Lisa Miller and you have a piece of work that will stimulate your senses. It's chaotic one moment and hypnotic the next. When the end is drawing near, Thompson greets the audience and pleasantly explains a few of the Sound Painting gestures. He wants the audience members to become part of the performance. Some people are too cool to participate and just sit there looking the part. Others are completely into it. I invited a friend of mine to attend the performance with me, not quite sure of how he would respond. I believe participation in the Sound Painting was exciting for him, a release of sorts. The entire evening created a desire in me to seek out more.

After speaking with festival director Jason Phelps on the phone, we decided to meet for coffee at Little City on Guadalupe Street for our interview. When he arrived, Phelps apologized and said he could not stay. He had strained his neck with rehearsals and stress. We agreed to discuss Sound & Vision '99 via e-mail. Walter Thompson came into town the next day and I was able to e-mail him, as well. Two days later, I was fortunate enough to be part of the audience on opening night.

Interview with Jason Phelps

RS: Jason, when we met on Friday, I asked if this was the first Sound & Vision Festival. You mentioned that you invited Walter to Austin for four nights last year. What about that experience brought you to create the festival?

JP: I have always wanted to do a festival that focused solely on new music and dance theater in a setting that was intimate and theatrical.

RS: When was the first time you saw The Walter Thompson Orchestra perform?

JP: I actually never saw them perform. I just met Walter in New York and we talked about music and theater and combining those elements; so he invited me to join in.

RS: What were your thoughts and feelings afterwards?

JP: I thought it was an amazing blend of all the elements that I am interested in -- theater, dance, music, video/film.

RS: How is Sound Painting different today when compared to your first experience?

JP: Now that I know the gestures more concretely, I can improvise with a freely focused kind of energy and listening.

RS: Is every Sound Painting performance and/or rehearsal different? Are there any set structures to the piece?

JP: The only set structures are the gestures that Walter throws out to improvise with and then anything goes from there.

RS: There are over 600 gestures in Sound Painting; does it ever become confusing?

JP: Not really, it just depends on how quickly you can pick up the gestures.

RS: Tell me about the Sound Painting workshop you and Margery Segal attended. How was the experience and what did you do?

JP: We developed the Sound Painting language every day for a month with artists from all over the country coming and going.

RS: I'm so fascinated with how all of the parts -- the director, musicians, dancers, singers, actors, and visual artists -- come together to create the performance. What is a rehearsal like?

JP: It's actually very focused and if you can imagine a symphony rehearsing, made of different elements -- that is pretty much what it is li

RS: I read that the performances during Sound & Vision '99 will be based around the theme "transformation." How will you use this theme in your performances?

JP: The piece with Margery is primarily a dance theater piece that explores themes of loss and love in the face of disaster. The transformation theme is still pretty unknown and we are not quite sure how to make it work with the short amount of time to build it.

RS: Tell me about Margery Segal and Ruth Margraff -- how did El Nino Mon Amour find its place in Sound & Vision '99?

JP: I had planned to have this piece in the festival all along. Ruth, Margery, and I worked very hard over Christmas creating the skeleton of the piece and then we brought Jim Coleman in to score the whole piece.

RS: What or who are your personal influences?

JP: Lots of music -- Pina Bausch, Meredith Monk, Michael Clark; and sculpture and painting.

RS: What were your passions growing up?

JP: Music, theater, dance, and art.

RS: What are your passions today?

JP: Pretty much the same.

Interview with Walter Thompson

RS: Walter, is Sound Painting something you create on a weekly basis in New York City?

WT: Yes. I have a busy schedule with my orchestra in New York City and residencies in Universities and public schools. I am always working on Sound Painting, developing new gestures for concepts that aren't in the system yet.

RS: Do you often travel to showcase this vision?

WT: There seems to be a steady growth in my taking Sound Painting out on the road. The past few years I have been fortunate to travel and work with other orchestras around the country. This is the third year I've come to conduct/compose in Austin and I'm very excited to work with such a fine group of performers.

RS: Tell me about your workshop in Woodstock, NY. How long have you been offering it, how was it developed, who comes to learn?

WT: Last Spring I was the recipient of a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation grant that supported a three month residence at the Brydcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, New York. The first two months I spent teaching Sound Painting to all the fourth and fifth graders in four different public schools in the Woodstock area. This culminated in a wonderful performance that included several members from my orchestra and students from the schools. The third month of the residence members of my orchestra and invited performers and educators from around the country joined me in a think tank to further develop the system. We worked six hours a day, six days a week. Over two hundred new gestures were created!

RS: At what age did you first realize you were beginning to create Sound Painting?

WT: The creative orchestra has always been the medium I've been attracted to. My orchestra in NYC has been together for over 16 years. Before that, I had an orchestra in Woodstock when I was 22, it was together for eight years. So it has been over 24 years that I've worked with large groups. I first started developing Sound Painting with the Woodstock group, but most of the work has been done with the NYC group over the past 16 years.

RS: Being a musician and visual artist, I am very interested in the term "Sound Painting" and where it came from; or how you came to use this term to describe what you do.

WT: I have a very simple answer for this question. I didn't have a clue of what to call my work until my brother, Charles (a very fine musician) coined my work Sound Painting. I was raised around visual artists, my father is a painter and my mother makes jewelry, so a name that brings the visual into it hit home.

RS: What are your musical influences?

WT: I love all kinds of music. When my father was in his studio, which was all the time, he would play everything from Charles Ives to Patsy Cline. I was surrounded by music and visual arts. The composers that influenced my the most were Charles Ives, Anthony Braxton, Omette Coleman, Kurt Weill and Earle Brown.

RS: What were your passions growing up?

WT: Music, painting, theater, and the outdoors!

RS: What are your passions today?

WT: Combining music, theater, dance and the visual arts in Sound Painting; and the outdoors.

RS: What is different about the Sound Painting performances here at Sound & Vision '99, compared to other performances?

WT: The difference is the individual. Since Sound Painting is composition from improvisation, the individual performers bring her or his art to the system.

RS: Have musicians, dancers, singers, actors, and visual artists always been a part of the Sound Painting process?

WT: A few years ago I received a commission from Lincoln Center, in New York City. They asked me to compose a work that would include the audience. I have always worked in theater and dance separately from my orchestra but had never combined them. The work at Lincoln Center I title "A Town Meeting" and at the last minute I decided to add two actors. This just opened up Sound Painting in a way that I had not thought of yet! I kept actors as part of the orchestra and then started to bring in the other disciplines.

RS: How will you use the theme "transformation" in your direction?

WT: Sound Painting is all about transformation. We jump concepts in a way that I would relate to changing channels on a five hundred channel television. When I come to a performance I don't have any preconceived notions of what the piece is going to be. Having a preconceived idea is death in Sound Painting. Transforming what comes from the improvisation into composition is the soul of Sound Painting.

RS: Walter, please add any comments you may have.

WT: A million thanks to Jason Phelps and Margery Segal and all the wonderful performers and audiences that participated in Sound Painting. I look forward to coming to Austin again!

Sound & Vision '99, February 16th through February 20th at Hyde Park Theatre, featuring the Margery Segal/NERVE Dance Co. in El Nino Mon Amour (or "Sex and Weather in Texas"); also featuring the Walter Thompson Orchestra in Sound Painting