Tayloe Harding, University of South Carolina
David Brian Williams, Illinois State University
Assisted by: Frank Clark (Audio Engineer, Georgia Institute of Technology), Ken Simpson (Director of Music Technology & Jazz, Brookwood High School), Daniel Williams (Saxophone and Flute, Atlanta, Georgia), and Benjamin Diden (Clarinet, Georgia Institute of Technology).
Grassroots 2008 was held at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Georgia. The audience was comprised of approximately 100 students from music, history, and government classes.
September 25, 2008
Grassroots 2008, created by Tayloe Harding and David Brian Williams, was a performance piece that combined composed and improvised music with a slideshow of images pertinent to the 2008 American presidential campaign. Given handheld clickers, the audience voted in response to these images in real-time, and the results were then reflected in the performers' musical improvisations. The performance ensemble consisted of flute, clarinet, saxophone, and two computers. An hour of discussion between students and the composers followed the performance.
Students were discernibly stimulated by the piece's political content. To paraphrase one student’s response, “I never knew my friends thought about the same political issues that concern me.” Subsequent performances of Grassroots 2008 were performed in Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama. Revised Grassroots 2012 performances were presented in Huntsville, Alabama, Richmond, Virginia, Bloomington, Illinois, and Atlanta, Georgia. See the website www.grassroot-2012.net for further information.
