Live Stream
Raymond MacDonald saxophones / voice / percussion / objects
Rachel Weiss piano / voice / percussion / electronics / objects
Raymond MacDonald (UK, 1967), Rachel Joy Weiss (USA/Israel, 1985)
Duet for 2 people who have never met: Episodes 1-5 World Premiere (2020) 30’
Raymond MacDonald and Rachel Joy Weiss have never met, but they have collaborated. In an effort to go headfirst into the ‘shifting tectonic plates of communication’ brought about by the Covid-19 lockdown, the duo decided to explore the possibilities of online improvisation, not only wrestling with hearing each other play for the first time, but also wading through the muddy waters of limited perception and spotty internet connection. Initiated by a series of improvisation sessions with Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, the duo’s online collaboration is in no way intended as a consolation prize; to make it worthwhile, MacDonald and Weiss shot for a performance that would be wholly its own, ‘facilitating new ways of working, seeing and hearing’.
Implementing instrumentation and found objects, Duet for 2 people who have never met serves as a musical representation of ‘nature’s unremitting power to change our lives’, the music playing out as a humble act of resistance against our new enforced environments. The duo refer to it as ‘an innovative strategy to overcome adversity’; consummate improvisers in their own right, they are more than capable of chancing it, framing their free-playing skills as a built-up method of survival. With both artists used to creating new scenarios and inventing projects on the fly, it seems natural that they’d respond to lockdown by making a new connection.
MacDonald and Weiss have had vastly different careers, but they share a fair few experiences in common. Both have traversed a wide range of genres: MacDonald has worked with artists as versatile as post-punk legend David Byrne and experimental artist Jim O’Rourke, while Weiss has flitted between contemporary composition and the pop world, while also drawing on her history as an opera singer. Both are keen to explore the tipping point that exists just beyond composition – the moment where organised sound is manipulated and riffed upon. And both artists are capable of making work that combines and expands on their palette, drawing as much from melodic music as abstract sound. Duet for 2 people who have never met sees them share duties, exploring object-made sound alongside their instruments in a way that is ‘mutually supportive’. Because right now, it’s good to branch out together.