The Chance Encounter film (above), directed by Lisa Guidetti, won the Gold Medal for Excellence in a Performance Film at the 5th Park City Film Music Festival. Visit www.parkcityfilmmusicfestival.com for more information.

“…here in the open street one had the illusion of time spread out flat – so to speak – like the skin of an ox; the map of time which one could read from one end to the other, filling it in with known points of reference.”
-Lawrence Durrell, “Mountolive” from the Alexandria Quartet

CHANCE ENCOUNTER: A 35-minute piece in, and about, transient public space with texts overheard in transient public space.

Chance Encounter was most recently performed on Friday, February 13, 2009 at The Whitney Museum of American Art (Madison Ave at 75th Street, NYC), with soprano Susan Narucki and members of The Knights; a project of Creative Capital with additional funding from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council it was premiered on September 28 2007 at Seward Park in Lower Manhattan.

Musicians: Tim Albright, Kyle Armbrust, Mike Atkinson, Christina Courtin, Gareth Flowers, Josh Frank, Adam Hollander, Colin Jacobsen, Eric Jacobsen, Anthony McGill, Alex Sopp, Lance Suzuki

Read the texts here

“Chance Encounter” is a 35-minute site-specific musical work, co-conceived by world-renowned soprano Susan Narucki and myself, in which a Susan and 12 instruments convene, one or several at a time, in and out of the texture and context of public spaces. Susan will sing songs and arias constructed of texts we have collected in transient public spaces, thereby enacting the listener’s private (yet collective) experience of the performance space itself. Each performance ‘venue’ will require a re-mapping of the spatial and movement elements of the piece onto the new location. The piece will have its world premiere in Seward Park, on East Broadway in lower Manhattan, and will be available for national and international touring thereafter. Lower Manhattan has many global-scale associations; “Chance Encounter” will restitute, inhabit and enlighten the neighborhoods that are on a more human scale.

The Research
About a year ago, Susan and I began our work on "Chance Encounter." I began carrying a notebook with me everywhere, jotting down utterances that begged to be proclaimed, sung. I noticed over time that people often say things in transient spaces that help them locate themselves in space and time (“Last time I ate here by myself;” “Remember – it was snowing horribly? And she was holding the dog?”), or provide a summary understanding of ‘the way things are’ (“They used to give you a paper bag with a sandwich and an apple, and that was the beginning of the end;” “It’s tough when you know what’s out there, and all you can do is look”). Susan and I have already collected hundreds of such utterances, many of them in lower Manhattan. I have organized them into categories – Aimlessness; The Third Person Who Is Absent; Nostalgia – and am in the process of creating free-form arias or songs that animate the particular mood of each collective topic.

The Performance
A single musician sits down and begins to play the opening, solo section of the piece. It is a flexibly-timed section, expandable. Several minutes later, another musician shows up at the site from some highly visible location: pulls up in a taxi or comes out of the subway or bus, comes out of a nearby deli or store. This person begins playing, across the street or plaza from the cellist. Some people on the street can only hear one player. Walk across the site, or across the street – the piece changes.

There will be no 'backstage' from which players wait for entrances etc. The players will have synchronized their watches earlier in the day via conference call – their entrances can be governed by absolute time.

The soprano soloist is not the first to arrive, nor the last. She may emerge from a second-story window or sing from a fire escape. She sings about nostalgia (“Do you ever go to your old apartment?” “We used to have a house here, but then my father lost his job. I never go there now.”) and strangely resonant commonplaces (“What kind of place are you looking for?” “Are you by yourself?”) Some players arrive in groups. Once a critical number of people have convened in one location, the piece becomes more structured in its orchestration. The large group migrates, over the course of the piece, away from the soprano to where the smaller group is, and others migrate back towards her. It is impossible to stand in any one location and hear the whole piece.

Players will stagger their exits - walk away, hail different cabs or become listeners for the rest. The soprano, in the balcony, will end the piece alone, decisively but without ceremony.