On January 17th, the Overture to Ergo Phizmiz's BILLIARDS will be rehearsed and presented in London. Venue tba imminently.
Choice cuttings from recent e-mails...
The piece we are making is the Billiards Overture.
It's in three sections.
(1) Exquisite Corpse
(2) Funballs
(3) Music Music Music (possibly title of this bit will change)
All the sequences use sound-collage, video-collage, shadow-puppetry, voice, lip-sync, violin, harpsichord.
First a brief prologue, where Raymond Scott is tinkering with machines in his workshop. He accidentally generates a well-known phrase of Mozart on a chance-music machine. The universe explodes.
In "Exquisite Corpse" the rules of the game of Billiards are introduced, to a sound-collage music score which is a game of heads-bodies-legs with all of Mozart's overtures, chronologically, using common factors between them to interlink.
In "Funballs" we introduce Mozart, who plays Billiards and composes music simultaneously. The Billiard balls and the music shoot off into space and become stars.
In "Music Music Music" Omar Khayyam is watching the stars, then proceeds to play them as a musical instrument. Kepler's Music of the Spheres is referenced, as is Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis. We'll probably come to an end with the voice of Cage, sounding like a children's storyteller.
A brief epilogue, the universe implodes back into Raymond Scott's electronic music-machine.
Animation Sequences....
Manic edits of Billiard balls
Photographic details of sheet music
The universe exploding from inside an electronic music machine
Billiard balls on a table, in the shape of the Great Bear, turning into stars
Billiard balls shooting off into space
Music notes flying through space
Spinning planets
Spinning numbers
Victorian / Edwardian heads-bodies-legs books animated
Constellations of stars, different stars, one a time, light-up brighter
Billiard balls moving around a table, then forming into the world "BILLIARDS"
Raymond Scott's music machines (extremely fanciful versions of them)
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