“Palm Presence” is a performance experiment using musical, theatrical, and absurdist sensibilities. It is loosely about living in Los Angeles, my fascination with palm trees and takes cues and inspiration from Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives and Mauricio Kagel’s Staatstheater. My goal is to develop a strong and potent language for creating intuitive and undefinable performances. “Palm Presence” is my first attempt at creating this style of immersive, disorienting performance.

“Palm Presence” is performed by a freely improvising trio of upright bass, saxophone, and drum set, eight performers who hum, play boomwhacker, and move, a person operating a button press, a narrator, and text with imagery. Buttons are made during the performance and handed out to the audience for the completion of the piece.