a multimedia saxophone performance event
Grab It! (1999/2004) by Jacob TV/Michiel Zegers
tenor saxophone, boombox and video
Live video stills from Grab It!
Program Notes
In Grab It! I tried to explore the 'no-man's-land' between language and music. I selected voice samples from an old American documentary about juvenile deliquency, called 'Scared Straight', in which life sentenced prisoners played an important role. The world, on the fringe of society, with its heartbreaking verbal assaults moved me deeply and was very inspiring. The rough vital sound of these shouting men formed a perfect unity with the harsh and powerful sound of the tenor saxophone. Grab It! is a kind of duet, a 'duel' if you like, for tenor and soundtrack. The tenor competes unisono with a perpetual range of syllables, words and sentences, demanding endurance of the performer. The meaning of the lyrics becomes gradually clear during the piece, as well as the hopeless situation for the prisoners, and suicide is not uncommon: 'He tied one end around the pipe, and he hung himself. So he went out the back door rapped up in a green sheet with a tag on his toe... You lose everything!' In a way death row is a metaphor for life. Yet the piece is not just sad, but can also be understood as a 'memento vivere'. Life is worth living: Grab it!
About the Composer
Jacob TV Dutch 'avant pop' composer JacobTV (aka Jacob Ter Veldhuis, 1951) started as a rock musician and studied composition and electronic music at the Groningen Conservatoire, where he was awarded the Dutch Composition Prize in 1980. During the eighties he made a name for himself with melodious compositions, straight from the heart and with great effect. 'I pepper my music with sugar,' he says.
Jacob TV is preoccupied with American media and world events and draws raw material from those sources. His work possesses an explosive strength and raw energy combined with extraordinarily intricate architectural design. TV makes superb use of electronics, incorporating sound bytes from political speeches, commercials, interviews, talk shows, TVangelists, and what have you - a colorful mix of high and low culture.
Long queues at the box office for the four-day Jacob TV Festival in Rotterdam in 2001 already attested to the growing popularity of this composer, both in the Netherlands and abroad. His Goldrush Concerto, the Third String Quartet and several of his so-called boombox pieces like Grab It! became hits, and various choreographers have been inspired by his music.
Early in his career, Jacob TV already stood up to what he called the 'washed-out avant garde', which made him a controversial figure in certain circles. He strives to liberate new music from its isolation by employing a direct - at times provocative - idiom that spurns 'the dissonant', which in TV's view reflects a completely devalued means of musical expression. His 'coming-out' as a composer of ultra-tonal, mellifluous music reached its climax with the video oratorio Paradiso. At the Holland Festival 2005, the premiere of ...NOW... for stereophonic orchestra performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra received standing ovations.