photos by Ralph Gibson(Terrence McManus), Michelle Van Natta(Ellery Eskelin), Jordan Hemingway(Gerry Hemingway)
Terrence McManus is the founder, guitarist, and composer for his own ensemble project, a chamber trio called The Dream of the Ants. Completing the ensemble lineup are reedist Ellery Eskelin and percussionist Gerry Hemingway. The group's current main repertoire is the recently premiered, sixty minute, multi-sectional, through-composed work entitled, The Machine, composed by Terrence in late 2008. A truly unique work, The Machine incorparates a balance of fixed notation cells and improvisational elements, alternating and juxtaposed, along with written instructions that give the player the flexibility to make a lot of their own directional choices. This technique was designed to allow the piece to unfold a different way with each performance, and draw upon the players strengths in improvisation and spontaneous composition.
In addition to the trio setting, the piece also has two new alternate versions, one which expands the trio to a quintet, and adds pianist Russ Lossing and violist Mat Maneri, and one scored for solo guitar. In addition to the trio version, both the quintet and solo versions had premieres in 2009. In 2010, a fourth version of the piece will be premiered, this time without a percussionist.