There have been some very recent live performances of Interference in Melbourne this last week by Richard Haynes. He performed it naked (except for a floral-looking head-dress) from behind a white corrugated plastic sheet, with a strong light behind him, so that his silhouette was projected onto the plastic sheet.
I'm not sure what RB's feelings about this 'staging' aspect were (certainly Chris Dench expressed a certain degree of trepidation about the 'wrapped-in-cling-wrap-on-an-operating-table' aspects of the staging of his The sadness of detail before the performance, but it was tempered by a fairly high degree of titillation...), but I thought it offered an interesting perspective on the piece. It ended up a rather voyeuristic experience, as the audience appeared to be watching, unnoticed, somebody experiencing fetish in the most private and intimate way. The lines of prosthesis were artfully obscured, too. Under the screen, Richard's feet (and, therefore, the kick-pedal) were visible, leading to a three-way ambiguity as to what the principle 'part' is, and what parts (if any) are to be viewed as grafted-on extensions.

Again, not much to do with jazz...

Gosh!!!
We do seem to have entered the era of 'interventionist' Barrett performance in the last 2 years. Mr Barrett is of course entitled to his feelings but my own opinion (more carefully considered than you might think) is that such things can't really do a composer any harm.

More superficially, I ... erm, well, on second thoughts maybe I shouldn't comment in a public forum.
(Erm ... Richard Haynes ... google images ... naked, you say?! - nah, calm down, tinners, they're publicity photos - they're bound to make him look attractive ...)

Well, I think there's two issues here:
1. Is the presentation something that enhances/reflects/communicates the content (implicit or explicit) of the music?
2. Is the marketing soemthing that reflects the content of the performance?

In this case, the presentation was actually pretty good. It certainly didn't dumb down the music, although it did fetishise it somewhat. While there were other moments in the concert that were a bit more superficial (like the construction hat + short-shorts combo) there was no sense in which the presentation of Interference was a gimmick. Furthermore, the installation was static enough that it did not retain interest, that is, it invited a particular perspective on the musical text, but it did not draw focus away from it.

In the second case, I thought that the marketing pandered woefully to the Midsumma crowd (Midsumma is Melbourne's annual 'queer festival'). 'Transgender contrabass clarinettist' is more a symptom of that, I think. Certainly there was nothing in the performance that dealt with gender roles in anything remotely resembling the grotesquely narrow 'falsetto = transgender' manner adopted by the marketing.
In any event, the audiences were mostly made up of Melbourne's concert-goer types, so the silly marketing didn't end up actually reaching its target audience.

While clearly I think there was nothing to worry about in this instance, I understand the point of view Mr Barrett is adopting. I can imagine that I'd feel apprehensive (at the very least) if a piece of mine were to be presented 'theatrically' without my involvement. Ultimately, a composer has a relationship with a piece of music that is (and can only be) reflected in the dots, and to have attention drawn towards something that somebody else has grafted onto your work could sit anywhere between nerve-wracking and downright alarming.