Ocean

So in my last post, I was lamenting not being able to see Merce Cunningham's Ocean. I was a little upset, but then I heard about it from someone who went. She said it was a 90 minute adagio (very slow), with a huge clock so you could watch the boring minutes pass by. Then I read a review from someone's website that made me also kinda happy I didn't go. Apparently there is pretty much no repetition of movements, something that choreographers use to make points and make the piece continuous and all kinds of things that are good. Then, I was talking to Anthony Georgeson today, who is a bassoonist in town and plays random fill-in gigs for lots of guys in good orchestras around here. The guy who usually plays for Ocean got some better gig or something and couldn't go, so enlisted Tony to fill in for him on Saturday night. So Tony shows up, looks at the music to find that it's pretty much just whole notes and there's no meter it's all just timed by the gigantic clock. Then the lady who is in charge of the musicians comes up and is like "I'm sorry, but we have a no subbing policy, you must be at rehearsal to play" and makes him leave. This is very ironic, as Merce Cunningham is most famous for his "chance operations" like not having the dancers here the music until opening night and sometimes changing the music halfway through and run and stuff. So wouldn't a non-rehearsed bassoonist just add to the randomness? Why would something like 3 minute whole notes need to be rigorously rehearsed? Why, among a 112 piece orchestra, would one off note from an un-rehearsed bassoon make all that much difference whether you like randomness in your work or not? Wierd.