Outdoor Music IV
four trumpets and four pedestrians
variable
May 1983; current version revised July 2008.
The work is performed at a street intersection; changing traffic signals cue the performers and determine the overall duration.
score (pdf)
video excerpts (Quicktime movie)
Recorded 7 June 1996, from the performance at the Living Arts of Tulsa New Genre Festival (video recorded by Steve Liggett; edited by Joseph Klein). Note: The spontaneous participation of the "audience" during this performance resulted in a more exuberant realization than intended—often bordering on mayhem and transforming the work into a full-blown happening. [Of particular interest in this recording is the interaction of the passing train (c.4:00) and the diesel truck (c.7:20).]
photograph
From performance at the 1996 New Genre Festival.
Outdoor Music is a series of site-specific, interactive works composed between March of 1982 and May of 1983 that are intended to impose a musical framework upon a variety of pre-existing environments. The last in the series, Outdoor Music IV for four trumpets and four pedestrians, was first performed on the corner of Fourth Street and North Broadway in Lexington, Kentucky, on 19 May 1989, as part of the "Al Fresco" music festival at Transylvania University. In this semi-improvisational work, the changing traffic signals guide the trumpet players as the four pedestrian-performers continuously cross the street in accordance with local traffic laws. Actual pedestrians (mingling with the pedestrian-performers) and passing vehicles alike unwittingly participate in the work, calling into question the relationship between the real and the artificial — and thus blurring the boundary between life and art. Outdoor Music IV is intended to bring out the inherent musical and dramatic qualities of city life, elements that are rarely considered by those who populate the urban landscape.