Gareth Davis returns with a new release Theatre Of The Mind composed by Roland Dahinden. Music inspired by, and created to raise awareness for mental health issues, like dementia and Parkinson’s Disease. 

About Theatre Of The Mind

Theatre of the Mind is a work for bass clarinet and electronics by Swiss composer Roland Dahinden. It was commissioned by the Dutch Foundation Mousai, an organisation that uses contemporary music as a platform to explore and work with issues of mental health. It was written for bass clarinettist Gareth Davis.
Roland’s composition takes elements of his mixed background performing in jazz and improvised combinations with Miles Davis and Anthony Braxton while at the same time working with John Cage, Alvin Lucier and other contemporary composers over the last 40 years.

The work uses different forms of notation, jazz and improvised influences and extended instrumental techniques as part of its musical language, thematically attempting to capture the layers and process of mental thought and how they interact with patches of partially remembered ideas. Struggles with mental health have become increasingly pronounced over the last few years.

In this work the idea of the sensation of being ‘locked in’ to one’s thought process are juxtaposed with memory and remembering and how memory recreates constantly, creating ever-changing backdrops which can in some cases lead to inspiration while in others can be the cause of confusion and struggle with surroundings. A recurring theme when speaking to those suffering from mental health difficulties was the sensation of the contrast between the heightened mental activity, with a sense of almost physical (or in the case of Parkinson’s Disease, actual physical) decay of the rest of the body.

Theatre of the Mind is a soundscape influenced not by a vision of surroundings but rather as an impression of the internal process of the mind, the constant ongoing narrative between memories, ideas, possibilities, and tasks.

Reviews

Vital Weekly, Mark Daelmans-Sikkel

Roland Dahinden is a Swiss trombone player. He played with Miles Davis at his last concert in Montreux in 1991. Apart from the fact that he’s a composer who studied and worked with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton and shared his last name with famous Swiss architect Justus Dahinden, he’s also a doctor of Philosophy of Music.

This piece is composed for Gareth Davis, an accomplished bass clarinet player and composer. The written score calls for field recordings and electric bass, played by Mikuláš Mrva.

The piece was commissioned by Stichting Mousai, a Dutch foundation with a specific mission: “The mission is to make the invisible side of neurological progressive disorders such as Parkinson’s disease visible and address the ever-increasing prevalence of mental health difficulties.  By artistically expressing the patient’s invisible world of thoughts and feelings, we hope to create empathy and understanding in the outside world. As a patient suffering from a neurological disorder, as with so many people suffering from mental health difficulties, you are constantly challenged in dealing with change, flexibility, development and other setbacks. It helps if the patient’s immediate environment, a wider circle outside and society as a whole recognise this and deal with it appropriately. We aim to create a more inclusive society by getting this message out to a wider audience while at the same time creating spaces and environments that can actually not just allow understanding but give people direct ways of dealing with personal issues. We do this through art, and in particular, through music. 

Art can depict the inner self and express change, emotion and feeling. Change and a different understanding can be beautiful and valuable in a world with more rigidity and false security.”

So Theatre of the Mind is an auditive representation of the mind, specifically with a mental disorder in mind (sorry, not sorry for the pun). It’s a fantastic piece and not suited for people with a short attention span. Dahinden uses extended techniques, or rather extended techniques are requiered by the bass clarinet player, which is no problem for Davis. Multiphonics galore, clanking of keys, field recordings that come and go throughout the hour-long piece and glide over the stereo image.

It’s a well-paced journey through one’s mind process. Listen to this in a quiet environment with little to no background noise, or even better, with headphones. And as always with modern music: repeated listening rounds will provide a better understanding of the music.

This is release number ten in Moving Furniture Records’s ongoing Modern Contemporary series.