The performers of Full Circle
Dr. Terry Longshore is a Professor of Music at Southern Oregon University and its Director of Percussion Studies. Last week, he also premiered a new piece with his gong orchestra. Full Circle: Turtle Wisdom debuted on Friday November 8th, at Ashland’s ScienceWorks museum. There were two showings, one at 6:30 and another at 7:30. The piece was roughly fifteen minutes long, and featured thirty performers, a collection of students from the SOU Percussion Ensemble and the SOU Honors College course Longshore teaches, “Making Music”, which features students from all Departments, majors, GPAs, and levels of musical and percussive experience.
The composition is inspired by the work of renowned Oregon artist and writer, Betty LaDuke. LaDuke began creating turtles in 2021, as a response to the pandemic and other global developments shaping our lives. The turtles are meant to have personal, political, and playful natures, and are inspired by her travels across the globe (LaDuke rarely sells her work, holding that it should be accessible to all). She said that her turtles were her “symbolic storytellers, commenting on the events currently reshaping our lives.” During the event, LaDuke’s turtles were all over the museum’s walls. The listener was as submerged in them as in the music itself.
Attendees were encouraged to perceive the performance in whatever way they wanted to. Performers, each with their own personal, unique gong, lined the museum and played from their own script, which interpreted one of LaDuke’s pieces in the Turtle Wisdom display. After a short introduction from Longshore explaining the project’s origins, participants, and mission, the gong orchestra got to work around five minutes late.
It’s easy to see how LaDuke’s turtles, which were highly naturalistic and paid homage to the traditions of many different cultures, inspired the music. The performers throughout the Museum conjured this remarkable variety of sounds using only their gongs and a handful of basic tools. The music was vivid, and many of the sounds that came from the gong orchestra could’ve come out of the ocean, too. They felt, at times mysterious, dark, and even sinister but were always majestic in a way that felt very natural and true to LaDuke’s artwork.
Like most attendees (I was at the 7:30 showing with a smattering of SOU students and other Ashlanders, and it was already night) I chose to experience Full Circle by walking through ScienceWorks’s premises. The event was by no means buttoned up or dramatic, but the experience was still very surreal. Most attendees quietly meandered through thirty performers with gongs of various shapes and sizes all, making different noises that were perhaps theoretically unrelated. But it felt like exactly the kind of music you might associate with an underwater cavern. Even the Museum’s ordinary, daytime features blended neatly with LaDuke’s displayed turtles and didn’t clash with the music at all.
Longshore’s “sonic adventure” and LaDuke’s artwork make the wisdom of the turtles accessible and simple. The audience was swamped in the gongs’ voices and can hear– and see– the turtles all around them. Entry was free for SOU students and faculty, and $10 for the general public.
Full Circle will perform Turtle Wisdom again on Tuesday, December 3rd at 7:30pm to see Full Circle: Turtle Wisdom at the SOU Music Recital Hall. The program promises to be a thrilling blend of percussion and steel pan music, showcasing works from contemporary composers, Caribbean rhythms, and the powerful synergy of steel drums and traditional percussion instruments. In addition to the performers on November 8th, the SOU Percussion Ensemble will be joined by Maraval Rd. Steel Pan Band and special guest, Dr. Casey Shillam, SOU Provost and Executive Vice President. Featured works will be an impressive range of compositions, from Caribbean-inspired works to experimental pieces.
