Symbol of Symbols is a performative piece conceptualized by Jasmine Pasquill for the show Lost Symbols at the Convent of St. Cecilia.  

A 20 minute performance piece set inside of a chapel within a convent; the piece consists of actions within actions, done in three’s with a 15 minute drone piece, an opening + closing sermon and an accompanying triad of live-painting dancers. The tri-tone musical interval will be the cradle for the piece, this interval came to be heard in Western cultural convention as suggesting an “evil” connotative meaningin music and was chosen for the Lost Symbols show because of it’s original symbolic association with the devil and its avoidance in medieval ecclesiastical singing because of its dissonant quality. The name diabolus in musica (“the Devil in music”) has been applied to the interval from at least the early 18th century. Although this layer of the ominous sounding tri-tone scale will be omni-present, the musical system used will take the listener through various other journeys. This system, coined “Gestural Improvisation,” by the composer/musician David First is defined as a set of procedures that isolates those musical elements traditionally considered ornamentation or aspects of expression and elevates them to the level of most significant extrapolative detail. Examples of fundamental gestural improvisation techniques would be the implementation of glissando/pitchbend/vibrato in the area of frequency, active filtering/overtone isolation inthe area of timbre, and tempo modulation/syncopation/rubato in the area of rhythm. This detail, however, is only one set of co-ordinates in a field of continuous energy. 

*Sadly there was not enough light to capture the performance but the sound is good, you just have to get through there first few minutes and stare into the burning flames of the candles.

Thanks my collaborators:

• David First
• Suzan Polat
• Jaiko Suzuki
• Julia Frodhal