Eliza on Time With People

One of my favorite things about working with a.pe.ri.od.ic is the way we can spend large amounts of time analyzing and debating the seemingly insignificant minutiae of each score we present. In Tim Parkinson’s opera Time With People, that includes things like:

“Should we step over the trash, or drag our feet through it?” 

“When someone destroys your tower, should you react, and if so, how?” 

“Which way is east?” 

Tim came to Chicago from London to work with us a couple of weeks ago, and he was refreshingly open to most of our ideas, enjoying the way we’re making the piece our own. I think he was even surprised at the amount of effort and thought we’d put into some of the details. 

To me, this piece offers a rare chance not to just play music, but to be playful. At one of our run-throughs, we accidentally kept the fourth movement going for probably 15 minutes longer than it was supposed to. None of us really knew how long it had been because we were so absorbed in our actions. I’m also having a lot of fun being a guitar soloist in Opus 5 (I normally play the flute). Overall there is a lot of humor and absurdity in the work, but I also think there are moments of incredible beauty. 

I hope you’ll join us on Sunday, February 26 at 8:30pm for the U.S. premiere and enjoy some time with some people.

-Eliza Bangert