BINGO: A Game of Chance ... is a musical fantasy that places five string bass players wearing tuxedos at a church bingo game in South Boston, complete with caller and rich background vocalizing of the women in attendance as they shuffle their Bingo chips. Thus the Middle-American setting becomes aurally surreal. Each of the players has as his part a bingo card with musical instructions. The rich sound producing qualities of the contrabass are heavily used. However, different players may have different instructions, e.g. one player may be required to battuto col lengo for his I-25, and another player pizzicato both sides of a fingered g string for his I-25. The piece is meant to be humorous as well as serious. There is no need for contemporary music to be ponderous. This piece uses the musical composition techniques of chance, as well as serialization, free improvisation, as well as statistical calculations. It is also a tongue-in-cheek glance at John Cage's I CHING, Xenakis' stochastic methods, and all those post-Schoenberg academic serialists, for all of those techniques are contained in this game of Bingo.

Voigt69