Foldin’inin’

May 18, 2014

For the next Bristle gig (Sunday 5/25 at Berkeley Arts), premiering a new piece–still finishing up the form, but drawing inspiration from the Mad Magazine Fold Ins. I loved those things when I was a kid–we had a stack of Mad mags around the house, the fold-in was on the inside back-cover.  The image was often some elaborate picture, chock-full of detail, with a caption posing a question or description.  When you folded in the sides to meet in the middle (“A meets B”), the picture was transformed into something entirely different, with the ends of the caption also joining to form the answer.

My piece is inspired by ragtime compositions, but been working on and off trying to figure out how to vary the form so it’s not just a straight read through of some jaunty syncopated licks.  The Fold Ins kept coming to mind, take a straight presentation of some material but then truncate it, pick the best parts, twist it around a bit, try to rejoin it in some novel way, see what you get.  Could work it in reverse–the listener hears these not-quite-flush arpeggiated, rhythmic bits, that eventually make some kind of sense when the original context for them is presented.  We’ll see what happens–I hope to make Al Jaffee proud…