Timber
Big Ears Festival · March 2017 · The Mill & Mine, Knoxville
Michael Gordon’s Timber is written for six amplified two-by-fours. No pitch in the ordinary sense, no melody, nothing to hum on the way out — just six planks of construction lumber and an hour of accumulating rhythm.
The commission was led by Mantra Percussion together with an ensemble overseas, with support from Nief-Norf. We toured it through 2013 — roughly seven cities, in rooms that had nothing in common with each other: a library, an arts center in a former goat farm, a handful of halls across the Southeast.
The tour
We also played it at the Nief-Norf Summer Festival. Then in March 2017 it opened Big Ears — the first full performance of the festival, following the opening ceremony, at the Mill & Mine.
That room is the reason the photographs look the way they do. The players are spread across the floor and the audience stands between them, close enough to touch the lumber. There is no stage, no front, and no seat with a better view than any other. What you hear depends entirely on where you are standing, and people move.
Timber — Michael Gordon
Performed with Nief-Norf
Photographs — Fistful of Tigers Photography
