A Night at the Theater

Robert Rodriguez was correct with his initial statement that the songs that he composed for the concert "felt like Broadway." While I have never (and probably will never) consider myself a theater-goer, the cords and dissonance used in all of his pieces stuck me as something out an American made play. His piece "The All-purpose Rag" embodied this feeling for me, with its heavy dissonance use, and its emphasis of "chaos" over "order" (for lack of better words). Its use of violin and clarinet melody kept a constant war going on stage, with the piano constantly trying to hang on. The drums served as ornamentation through most of the piece, relegated to the back of the musical chaos. Due to the small size of the theater the reverberation within the theater was quite noticable, causing every noise to become far more noticable (used to great effect by the triangle). Unlike the other pieces, this seemed to hold a greater influence over the audience. Throughout the pieces before, I could hear students chatting throughout many of the pieces (most likely due to the performers being teachers), but this piece caused all chatter to die out. One thing that I noticed though was the lack of smaller children, most likely an influence of the late time that the concert was.