The partner in crime

Joelle La Rue
Clarinet

I am also a Masters student at Carnegie Mellon, currently studying Clarinet performance with Mike Rusinek. I received my Bachelor's in Music, Clarinet Performance from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 2005. After taking a couple of years off from school and a year off from playing I came to CMU with a new appreciation for my studies. I hope to one day play in an orchestra.

With graduation coming up I was looking at my requirements and found that I needed a theory class so I enrolled in Postmodernism not really knowing what that was or who the prof would be. It sounded interesting but mainly it was the only theory class offered in the fall. It has turned out to be one of my favourite classes that I have ever taken. As Kate mentioned we were a stubborn class, and I was one of the worst. But it made for some great conversations and arguments. One of which ended up with Prof Randall telling me that my term paper had to be to define music.

This paper was the bane of my existence through December. There are a lot of papers written of the subject but not one that could answer my question. I refused to believe that any random noise could be defined as music, there had to be more. But what? After many long nights of reading and contemplating I came up with an answer, for now. It seemed to me that anything could be considered music as long as there was intention from either the performer/composer or the listener. I cannot tell someone that the sound of the highway as they drive is not music if they choose to believe it is music insomuch as they cannot tell me that it is music if I choose not to believe it is music. This is one of the reasons that I wanted to explore the performance of non traditional music.

I hope to be able to understand the realm of non traditional performance in non traditional spaces as well as traditional spaces. We are planning on performing this work in many locations from a formal recital hall to outside to art galleries. I want to experience how the different spaces change my performance as well as observe how the audiences will react. By involving different media I will hopefully be able to get an idea of how we can perform a piece of music through art. The main question for me is; If a piece of art is created from the score is it music?

I will leave you with that question.