An Incredible Simulation – The UMass Lowell Album Ensemble Projects

For several years now at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, I have directed a music ensemble that performs select albums in their entirety. The aim of these projects is to pay tribute to albums, wherein we attempt to recreate in exact detail the musical and sonic characters of these recordings. This process provides context for rigorous ear training, musical execution, and ensemble performance. The concept began when I was asked to fill in for another instructor who led a metal ensemble. Since that’s not exactly my area of expertise, I thought perhaps I would offer a prog ensemble instead, as a way to appease the disappointed guitar shredders. The year was 2019 which coincided with the 50th anniversary of King Crimson’s debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King (ITCOTCK). Seemed an appropriate choice, and I thought perhaps we would extend the Crimson vibe with a performance of Red the following semester. It was only after this was announced to the students that I took a refresher listen to ITCOTCK and realized there was very little guitar shredding and a whole lot of woodwinds and mellotron. Fortunately, I teach in a music program that had a nice supply of musicians capable of playing all the sounds we would need. And so, we gathered together and spent the entire first rehearsal mastering the unison “three score and four” section of “21st Century Schizoid Man.”

That fall, we blew the roof off the concert hall with a remarkably accurate recreation of the album. It was one of the best live shows I had ever been a part of, and everyone was jazzed about really showing the world what we could do with Red the next semester. Through the winter of 2020, we honed our parts and became a well-oiled Crimson machine, moving with velocity towards our mid-March performance date. Then COVID shut down the world and our concert was cancelled. As the months passed, it became clear that the 2020/21 academic year would have to be entirely virtual. I scratched my head to figure out how to direct an ensemble from the discomfort of home. Fortunately, I was inspired by our UMass Lowell choral director, Jonathan Richter who put together an Eric Whitacre-esque video of his group performing individually over Zoom, then assembled to become a Brady Bunch chorus (with much better music). You’ve probably seen something like it; during the pandemic, this model of performance offered one possible solution to the problem, and many music programs did something similar.

So, video was the way to go. Except, I wasn’t enamored with the mosaic of singers in bedrooms (somewhere in my academic past, I had even presented a fairly critical analysis of projects like Whitacre’s virtual choirs and the Playing for Change composite performances). So…, hmm. Meanwhile, in the hopes of delivering streamed performances, I had set up a new version of The Aviary in a space large enough to gather a handful of musicians behind individual isolation screens. The technological learning curve was steep, and in the end, the concept proved less than ideal. As I learned over time, the main problems came from real-time streaming, getting cameras and audio in sync. Most issues could be easily solved by recording, then re-syncing, balancing, choosing more carefully which camera angle to show at a given moment. And then, the lightbulb. My student ensemble wouldn’t have to be quite as virtual as I feared. Instead, we would prepare our parts via cloud-based audio software, then gather in small subsets of the ensemble to perform with microphones and cameras rolling. University policy, following state guidelines, issued strict limitations on the number of people that could share a certain sized space. Following those protocols, I determined that I could have 6-7 musicians and a crew of 2-3 people at the same time in various areas and side rooms. We would have to layer our performances rather than all play together at the same time. Much like classic multi-track albums had been recorded since the late 60s. Hmmm…

Recalling an adolescence with massive headphones glued to my head while perusing the mysteries of gatefold album artwork, I thought a fitting subject for a performative analysis of a recording might be Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (DSOTM). Ambitious, yes. But then, we had a lot of time on our hands in those locked-down days. Several weeks of Zoom meetings and general MIDI approximations later, the rhythm section for the ensemble gathered together in The Aviary. To test microphones, the band quietly launched into the hypnotic majesty of “Us and Them.” Everyone in the room fell into a state of bliss as the cycles of arpeggiation encircled and enchanted us. It was live music, played by live human beings. Together. In the same place. 

Over the weekend, various sets of musicians contributed their parts as we built up the recordings just as Pink Floyd had done almost 50 years earlier. The truly magical moment came when a completely live recording of instrumentalists and vocalists found our moment of bliss with a stupendous performance of “The Great Gig in the Sky.” I held my breath for the entire song as I moved the camera around the three singers in one continuous take. While the complete album video has many wonderful moments, it was this performance that seemed to transcend the global malaise.

After the weekend taping, I thought back to my King Crimson ensemble and immediately sent out inquiries about whether they might want a shot at performing Red. Some students had graduated, others had dropped out. But remarkably, everyone was willing to try, and we reserved the first two days of 2021 to make a video in the mode I had just established with the Pink Floyd ensemble. When the completed DSOTM video was posted in December, it received attention far beyond our wildest dreams, finding a global audience, getting airplay at classic rock radio stations, and landing us on the front page of the Lowell Sun. Well over 100k views later, it continues to find new fans every day. The creation of the King Crimson Red video took place with much excitement in the air. And to my relief, without having rehearsed in nine months, the group nailed their performances.

While working on the mix and edit of Red, the Pink Floyd ensemble began preparations for our spring project, Wish You Were Here (WYWH). Once again, we assembled in small groups and layered the tracks. For all of the projects, I wanted to capture collective performance as much as possible and so songs were performed in long takes, often with large gaps while students waited for their moment. Thus, we might have lead and harmony vocals, a gap of 30 seconds for what might be a guitar solo, then the saxophonist who had been patiently waiting for six minutes might finally have a chance to perform. My insistence on doing everything as if we were playing live for an audience necessitated some creative engineering. For example, the recreation of the title track meant running the acoustic guitar mic live to a short-wave radio signal. One of the ensemble members tuned the dial from other stations to static to the frequency we were broadcasting the guitar on. Yes, we did that live. And as I was informed during preparations, the sax solo in the middle of “Shine On,” was actually part baritone sax and part tenor sax. Hmm… Said player made a Frankenstein piece of hardware that would allow him to play the bari part then during the four-beat drum fill, switch to tenor. Fun to watch (even in the video), it would have been even more impressive on the concert stage. Even the opening of the album was done in real time – the four vocalists performing the harmonic changes on pitched wine glasses just as on the original recording. Several takes were ruined by my flat-footed camerawork as I attempted to move around the performers as they made quietly beautiful sound while I failed to avoid the most creaky floor boards in our converted 19th century mill building.

We debuted the completed video in May of 2021, by which point we were allowed to gather in a large rehearsal room on campus, carefully maintaining massive amounts of distance from one another. There, we were able to perform both albums completely in real time for our own benefit if not for an outside audience. A sign that perhaps things might get better. As they certainly did for me as I took a year-long sabbatical leave to make Currents and in general try to recenter, refocus, reenergize. In my absence, an ensemble was established to perform the music of Steely Dan. Those performances still exist as concert videos, and I was fortunate to be able to attend the second semester concert of Aja.

Upon my return for the 2022/23 academic year, I thought perhaps I should look at some slightly more contemporary music. Moving the clock forward a couple of decades, I realized Radiohead espoused a similar sense of sonic detail and musical experimentation as the prog bands of the 70s (though Radiohead has frequently dismissed such comparisons, somewhat defensively in my opinion). Thus, the UMass Lowell Radiohead ensemble embarked upon OK Computer in celebration of its 25th Anniversary. This time, the performance was in the Durgin Concert Hall on the UML campus, though it was filmed in a manner similar to my previous video projects. While everyone played at the same time on a larger stage than could be mustered in the Aviary, we still opted for roaming cameras and multiple takes without an audience present. At the conclusion of our recording that November weekend, an audience came in for the performance. The show was a lot of fun for band and audience alike, but for the final video, I opted for the sonic clarity and more intimate visuals we had captured without the audience present.

Excluding the audience weighed on me. So, for our spring project, In Rainbows, I devised a plan that allowed for both sonic control and proximate cameras as well as the presence of an actual audience. We set up on the same concert hall stage but performed in a circle behind the closed curtain. The audience was seated in the wings on either side of the stage. We gave three concerts, and I selected the best performance of each song, modeling the camera angles and general feel to what Radiohead had created in their From the Basement performance of the album. The presence of the audience proved inspirational to the musicians and despite some fraught rehearsals with this challenging music, the group really rose to the occasion, finding the magic that can happen when musicians and audience collaborate to establish “the moment.”

By this point, the album ensembles had become part of our music department culture, a tradition I seem obligated to continue. For the next set of projects, I decided to step back a decade or so to a band that was contemporary with my musical maturation – Talking Heads. This fall, we took on the densely layered album from 1980, Remain in Light. Since Durgin Hall was under renovation, we presented it in a local venue, bringing in extensions to the stage in order to fit all 17 musicians into the fairly constricted space. With the audience present, I knew cameras would have very limited options for placement and movement. I also realized that so much would be going on in the music that might not be visible on the densely packed stage that the show might need some visual support. Back in the day of the first King Crimson performance, I had put together some simple still images to project behind the performers. I decided to resurrect the concept of visual projections and apply what I had learned in the course of creating animated music videos. Thus, a series of animated images projected throughout the concert. This part of the project took on a life of its own, and so I have decided to make two versions of the completed video available to the public. First, there’s the version with the band on full display, having a great deal of fun and playing for an enthusiastic audience. The alternate version uses the same audio of the ensemble’s performance, but with the films I created for rear projection during the show.

Scheduled for spring of 2024: Speaking in Tongues. I’m working out some ideas for staging that hopefully might be just a little less time-consuming for me. Or not. Ambition and the desire to do something a little different each time out will likely get the better of me. No matter what though, I know my students will deliver. They always do. Don’t tell the administration, but I love (this part of) my job.