When the creative trio behind the new ballet “The Space Between” are off the job, none of them is usually listening to the typical orchestral ballet music. Choreographer Ken Ossola has lately enjoyed starting his day with Janet Jackson’s “Together Again,” or music by Billie Eilish or American rapper El-P. If you get in the car with pianist, composer, and electronic artist Michael Cain, you’ll probably hear hip-hop or electronica à la Kendrick Lamar or Sampha.
And after Boston Ballet music director and composer Mischa Santora gets home from a performance, he’ll get on YouTube and look for live performances by Thelonious Monk or Keith Jarrett. “The problem with that is you get so immersed in it that the next thing you notice, it’s 2 a.m.
, and the next day is going to be really bad,” Santora said during a break in rehearsals for “The Space Between,” which premieres Thursday in Boston Ballet’s “Spring Experience” contemporary program. And the pit orchestra for “The Space Between” might be large, but “Toccata for Orchestra and Live Electronics” — the new piece Santora and Cain created for “The Space Between” — doesn’t resemble the usual orchestral ballet music one might recognize from “The Nutcracker” or “The Firebird.” In one corner of the pit sits Cain’s luminous workstation, where he manipulates sound using Ableton Live and his own software, Ekwe.
“There’s sampled acoustic pianos from the turn of the century that h.
