
(Vanessa Voskuil - photo by James Sewell)

This collaborative work of challenging-to-describe art was organized by Zachary Crockett, and served as the dissertation for his PHD in music composition (at the University of Minnesota). Months before I entered the process Zac joined forces with choreographer Vanessa Voskuil, and at her suggestion invited visual artist David Mehrer to the team. They’re all amazing so check out their respective pages!


(Zachary Crockett / me - photo by Justin Schell)

Zac began the creation process by composing a recorded soundtrack that would serve as the foundation for the whole piece. In its totality the track was about 45 minutes of sparse, ambient soundscape divided into 3 sections by 2 climaxes of much denser, intense textures.

Ambient excerpt:

2nd climax:

Based on an early draft, him and Vanessa began brainstorming themes and concepts off of which the work would be based through a long series of emails. This early draft was much more sparse than Zac intended for the final product, but Vanessa had very positive feedback about the expansive/open texture and convinced Zac to keep it lean/simple. Some examples of themes/concepts that arose throughout the process: ritual, expansive, earth, fire, light, sound, unity, negotiation of space, attraction/repulsion, etc., which led them to the title: “VOCA::Omni (Ritual #1).”


(David Mehrer - photo by Justin Schell)

The sculptures (David’s creations) that Zac, Vanessa and David decided to incorporate into the piece all produce different qualities of light – my favorites being the 55 galon lamps and empty basin because they have the common theme of light as a volume, which I find very evocative. David’s sculptures really helped me get into the right mindset for this production because of how urgently they invite interpretation without imposing any definite guidelines on the substance of said interpretation. Every component of this performance was designed to do exactly that, and the unity of intention saturated the whole experience with a feeling of raw creative energy – rehearsals and performances alike. So at the first of only 4 rehearsals the sculptures and musical sound scape were in the late stages of development, but there was still a huge amount we didn’t know about the end product.