Within A Day—Thingamajigs Performance Group and sfSound perform works by Robert Moran

Members of Thingamajigs Performance Group (TPG) and sfSound join forces to perform works of Robert Moran. A new work entitled “Within A Day” will be created in a collaborative manner between Robert Moran and TPG, to be premiered at the concert.
This concert is the culmination of a working residency between esteemed American composer Robert Moran (b. 1937) and the Thingamajigs Performance Group. In January, Moran will be in San Francisco to direct TPG in creating a group collaborative musical work that blurs divisions between the role of composer and performer.
Along with the premiere of “Within A Day”, sfSound will perform some of the early graphic scores by Moran.
The Thingamajigs Performance Group emerged from the long-term collaborations between individual artists that now make up its ensemble members. Using unusual musical instruments, TPG combines traditional Eastern sensibilities with modern American technologies and performance practices. Creating pieces in a group collaborative process that sometimes incorporate voice and multimedia elements, this ensemble of musicians expands and contracts within each performance situation.
The Thingamajigs Performance Group’s unique process of creating work is closer to that of theater companies or dance troupes rather than standard music ensembles. Instead of commissioning one composer to write music for which the ensemble will play, TPG creates each of it original works in a collaborative manner with each ensemble member and/or collaborating partner having equal creative input in guiding the work to fruition. The core ensemble members have been working together for over 10 years and have devised this unique system of creation through a deep musical and philosophical understanding that comes with years of working and developing together.
TPG specializes in works developed, created and performed in specific spaces and situations and have created major works and held partnerships with Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, Headland Center for the Arts, Stanford Lively Arts, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Theatre of Yugen, Museum of Art & History Santa Cruz, Mills College Music and Art Departments and the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
The core members of the Thingamajigs Performance group consist of Suki O’Kane, Zachary Watkins, Dylan Bolles and Edward Schocker. Key collaborators over the years include poet Stephen Ratcliffe and Sasha Hom, visual artists Michael Myers and Keith Evans, and dancer Shinichi Iova-Koga.