Who: Denver composer Roger K. Green
Capitol Hill composer Roger K. Green turns 29 on Saturday, the same day his experimental work featuring “the soothing sounds of 30 electric typewriters” debuts at The Lab at Belmar. Once the guitarist for the defunct Denver dream-pop band The Czars, Green lately has been sitting in with Porlolo and local jazz trumpeter Ron Miles, and doing his own solo gigs. His first commissioned piece, composed on an electric typewriter that belonged to his grandmother, features 20 typists, five professional percussionists playing typewriters, and five pros playing guitar, pedal steel guitar, keyboards, bass and soundboard. Green will conduct the ambient work from the deck of a Segway Human Transporter.
Why conduct from a Segway? Segways are so funny-looking. In other parts of the world, tourists use them to get around. But they’re so part of the Belmar lifestyle, we just had to throw one in.
The electric typewriter is an unusual “instrument” to feature. (Lab executive director) Adam Lerner came up with the idea. It took a few weeks to fully get it out of him, but I think what he likes about it is that we type, like, every day. Or we think that we type. But really, we edit as we type. This art of typing that was once a daily activity that a specialized group of people did, doesn’t really exist as it was. So Adam says the only way we can really appreciate the skill now is as art.
Was it tough to figure out how to use the typewriter sounds as music? Well, it’s not like it hasn’t been done before. I think Erik Satie was the earliest person using the typewriter, giving it a written-out part.
How did you recruit the players? One night, right before I went to bed, I put a posting on Craigslist saying, “This is an ideal job for retired typists.” By the time I got up the next morning, I had 24 responses. Not all of them are retired. Some wrote and said “I’m 36, but I type really well. Can I still do it?” One was from someone whose last job was teaching typing class in 1978.
Is the typewriter used as a solo instrument or just background? It’s used both ways. This one woman, at least according to her resume, types 102 words per minute with no mistakes. On a typewriter. She’s the fastest by far, so I think I might solo her for a line until the bell rings, and then solo someone who types 30 words per minute. The sound is going to be really different.
How long is the piece? I can’t tell. Some of it is going to be improvised, but think it will run close to two hours.
That’s a long time to be sitting there listening to typing! What I imagine is that the audience is going to be milling around, conversing on top of it, and that’s OK. When Erik Satie, who is credited with coming up with ambient music, wrote the “Gymnopedies,” he said he intended them to be music underneath people interacting socially.
So, do you know how to type? I did take a keyboard class, but I don’t think I got a lot out of it. I know where my fingers are supposed to go, but I don’t really type that way.
COME INTO THE LAB
Roger K. Green’s composition for the sounds of 30 electric typewriters will debut Saturday at 5 p.m., during a celebration of the grand opening of The Lab at Belmar’s new building, 404 S. Upham St. in Lakewood.
The Lab’s free, all-day party gets going at 2 p.m. with two hours of rock ‘n’ roll square dancing and moves on to an hour of jamming by Hello Patti, a garage band from The Logan School, at 4 p.m. Denver gypsy-cabaret band DeVotchKa plays from 8 to 9 p.m.
The Lab’s inaugural exhibition is “Fantome Afrique,” a film installation by British artist Isaac Julien. The work, co-commissioned with the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Ellipse Foundation in Portugal, will run in a continuous loop during the Saturday shindig.
