John MacCallum Remembers his Last Gig with David Wessel
Composer and CNMAT alum, John MacCallum, remembers his last gig with David Wessel:
-I really wanted to dig up the last photo I took of David, which was also the last time I saw him. It's pretty awful quality, but what can I say, if I thought this was the last time I'd have seen him, I might have taken a little more care. This photo was taken at Meyer Sound where he was going to play later that evening using the SLABS, in front of him, and the spherical speaker array to his right. That bright white light is the monitor of the Mac tower between him and the Dodec. If it wasn't overexposed, you'd see a visual representation of the 8 beams that the Icos, barely visible above the Dodec, was projecting. In this moment, we had already fired everything up, and he was just pulling up his patches to do a quick sound check. He and had I had loaded all that gear into his car at CNMAT and drove over, set it up, and as soon as I heard sound I split--I was super stressed trying to get everything ready so I could leave for Venice the next day or the day after to work the Biennale with the Eco Ensemble, and then head to Paris for a residency at Ircam where I was when he passed. I've thought about that goodbye a lot over the years. It was super casual: alright, have a great show tonight, see you in a few months, yeah man, thanks, have a great time in Paris, say hi to the folks at Ircam.