In the west coast premiere of Manifestos 6: Ben Patterson, world-renowned artist Charles Gaines interprets Fluxus artist Benjamin Patterson’s Variations for Double-Bass (c. 1962), a score for performance that uses words rather than traditional musical notation. 

Gaines converts Patterson’s letters into music, following an inventive system Gaines devised in 2004: transcribing letters A through H from the texts into their equivalent musical notes (with the use of the letter “H” representing the code used in early Baroque tradition for B-flat).  

The resulting composition, to be performed by an ensemble consisting of a string section, double bass, trumpet, trombone, tuba, and percussion, pays homage to Patterson’s legacy while showcasing evolutionary artistic engagement with systems of language, text, notation, and sound.