Grassroots 2008 is a music performance event that combines composed and improvised music accompanied by a synchronized series of digital images exploring issues of the 2008 presidential campaign: the grassroots movement of the citizenry as well as issues to the current economy, global conditions, federal government, and the campaign. The audience also actively participates in the performance by voting on these issues using a small, handheld response device or "clicker' provide by Turning Technologies, LLC.
The composition, or better labelled, a performance piece, was a collaboration between the two of us: Tayloe Harding composing the music score and digital track, David Williams composing the sequencing of digital imagery, political opinion pieces, and programming the audience polling, and both of us working out the overall structure and form of the piece. The concept was done as a research project to approach the challenge of creating a musical event where the audience could be active participants using commercial technology. At the same time, we sought to create a context that encouraged the audience to contemplate many of the deep political issues that have gripped the nation over the unprecedented two-year-long political campaign for President of the United States.
The performance piece consists of a prologue followed by four sections. Each section of the composition begins with a pre-composed interlude where the audience views a collage of images focused on the political issue; the interlude is series of political statements offering the audience the opportunity to anonymously vote their level of agreement, strongly agree to strongly disagree, and see the results in real-time. Based on the results of the polling displayed as a bar graph on the screen, the wind players depart from the pre-composed music to improvise on music snippets provided to match the voting results. The musical result will therefore vary from performance to performance based on the political bias reflected in the audience voting. The final section of the composition concludes with the audience voting their selection for President. Every effort was made to maintain an unbiased political stance in the photos, issues, and music selected.
The wind instrumentation is clarinet, saxophone, and flute, all playing from a prepared score. One computer provides pre-composed digital music using GarageBand; the other computer provides the pre-composed Flash sequences of digital imagery and voting selections synchronized from PowerPoint with the music. The second computer also processes the audience voting data received via the handheld clickers.
Grassroots 2008 has been performed at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Georgia (as a community engagement activity with The College Music Society) and at the 51st annual meeting of The College Music Society in Atlanta, Georgia. The University of Alabama performance is the third performance of the composition. Some modification in content was made for this performance to reflect voting after the November 4th national election.
Tayloe Harding and Dave Williams, October 2008