And the start of my CoLab project

Ok, so I've been in 10 till 5 today as the first day on my project and I set of to Blackheath halls at 9 this morning not quite knowing what to expect, needless to say when I got there to find the orchestra laid out in a circle around the conductor and I'm sitting at the front of my section directly behind the conductor, all thoughts of what I had expected left my mind instantaneously. the picture bellow shows the layout.

Each player had a bag of 4 percussion instruments that they needed to play as well as their own instrument - some of the rhythms I had were really quite difficult to work out at first. todays rehearsal was basically just an introduction to the piece as there are 88 different parts and it can be very easy to get lost as i did on many occasions.
At the very beginning of the rehearsal we were told what was going to go on over the next week:

First of all we will all be rehearsing the Xenakis Terretektorh, which is a very rarely performed piece composed for 88 separate parts in 6 groups. This part of the final performance which will be on the 24th march at Blackheath halls will last approximately 15 mins.

After this the orchestra will divide into 3 groups and perform different types of things:

        group 1 will be doing a movement led work

        group 2 will be doing a visual and audio work

        and the final group will be doing a work based on orchestral extracts

each of these performances will be decided and created by the students. on the night of the performance the audiences tickets will be colour coded and which of these second performances the audience an audience member sees first depends on the colour of their ticket. each group will perform their project 3 times (1 to each audience group).

this all seams very exciting now and the fact that the audience is integrated within the orchestra I think could be quite fun. The whole idea is to bridge the gap between the performers and the audience whilst also flattening the hierarchy within the orchestral players at the same time.

I cannot wait for what is in store for tomorrow. please return tomorrow to find out what we've been doing.

goodbye for now :)