I was so surprised to see that at the bottom of the sealskin

Normally MXTW plays Word Jazz like this

Groups of four are arranged with two people sitting on chairs facing side by side in the same direction with a person standing directly behind them. The director gives them a simple sentence—hopefully with lots of juicy syllables and different types of sounds—and assists the group in memorizing the sentence. The group assigns a leader who leads the quartet in a call and response three times before any member of the group can speak at any time. They group improvises with the sounds of the words in the sentence to create a musical or at least sound-ey composition that is then performed for the larger company.

Usually, each quartet is given a different sentence. This year, however, I led them all with the same sentence:

“I was so surprised to see that at the bottom of the sealskin.”

As we talked about the experience of doing and listening, I wanted to try to do it again with the whole company. We formed two straight lines with the red yellow chairs in front and a standing line behind them. Here’s a video of the magic:

If we were to attempt a full company word-jazz again, I would probably adjust them into a circle so they could hear each other. And I would probably pick sentences with a wider range of sounds.