On Saturday night, I ran into the Stranger’s Romantic (as in Brahms) circuitry clairvoyant, Christopher DeLaurenti.

While DeLaurenti certainly writes an excellent classical/experimental/head music column for us, his true talent is writing radio halo orchestrations (check out “Gray Angel for electric guitar and prerecorded sound.”)

I asked DeLaurenti what his latest was, and his answer blew my mind. Get this: He’s taken the subversive art of field recording to its perfect double reverse back flip conclusion. Rather than the “traditional” conception—Steve Reich 1960s-style or even Eno/Byrne My Life in the Bush of Ghosts style—of holding the microphone down to the gutter and bringing the sounds of the real world into the concert hall, DeLaurenti sneaked his field recording set up into concert halls and bootlegged the players as they warmed up during intermission. The result? DeLaurenti’s new CD: Favorite Intermissions. Music Before and Between Beethoven - Stravinsky - Holst

So, you’ve got that clashing intermission ritual on record: musicians (either solo or in small groups) all going at the same time—practicing the tough phrases that are coming up in the second half of the program. improvising, tuning, or just plain jamming.

Here’s an excerpt from DeLaurenti’s essay about the project:

I have spent the last several years at orchestra concerts and ballet performances on my own singular plane of existence. Furtive, vigilant, with my eyes everywhere (for I might get caught!) and my ears carefully attuned to “playing” the orchestra, I’m on a secret mission: to surreptitiously record intermissions.

At concert halls across the country, symphony musicians often return to the stage during intermission, sometimes mere moments after the entire orchestra has officially exited. Individually or collectively, clarinetists, trumpeters, timpanists, and others warm up and work through difficult passages that await on the remainder of the program. This soundscape is not limited to American orchestras, though in my experience, visiting European orchestras, after the program’s first half, usually remain backstage until the second half of the concert begins.

Why record intermissions? One duty of the composer is to expose the unexpected, overlooked, and hidden skeins of music woven in the world around us. Culling sounds from the world as a composition subverts long-standing, essentialist notions of music as comprised of notes, melody, traditional instruments (violin, guitar, drums, piano, etc.) and so forth as well as flouts contemporary expectations of abstractly agglomerated, musique concrète-ized sound.

Throughout history, the definition of music has remained a moving target. I hope recording and presenting these intermissions in some small way abets and accelerates the ongoing re-definition of music in our culture towards moving, meaningful, coherent listening.

Making such recordings is illegal, a result of rules negotiated by the Musicians Union and various venues, yet I believe the importance of documenting these intermissions trumps antiquated copyright laws and misguided prohibitions.

Indeed, I asked DeLaurenti if he’s worried about getting sued. Nope. He doesn’t identify what recordings are what and so, no orchestra will be able to come after him.