Feburary bLOrk-taculair

20110225/6

Last weeks bLOrk concert was an amazing collaboration of musicians, dancers, and digital artists. Here is a full video from the uStream copy of the Saturday concert if it is still being hosted (It starts around the 20:00 mark), try this link.  Keep reading, I also have a high quality, edited version of the Friday night show, and a few pictures.

I was fortunate enough to perform alongside new and returning members of bLOrk, and even performed my piece about tuning and calibrating the laptop orchestra, 'Tuning Up'. This time, I included a malfunctioning computer which is designed to give me troubles throughout the piece. We were also excited to have Trace Reddell and a couple of his students from the Digital Media Studies program at DU showcase Jitter patches they have developed.

New levels of interaction

We broke new ground with this concert.  Not only were we joined by some fantastic jazz musicians to play electric Miles Davis compositions, but both nights we also had a different arrangement of dancers to add dimension to our performance.  The pieces by Miles Davis are from his 1969-70 albums–Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way – the first recordings where Davis used electric instruments and electrified sounds.  Cole Ingraham performed two excellent compositions, Digital Tuvan and GUI Madness.  Digital Tuvan features laptops synthesizing harmonics over the sounds of Cole's throat singing, and GUI Madness is a noise exploration piece that has the laptop operator furiously clicking buttons and moving sliders as they pop up on the screen.

Electric Miles - Hugh Ragin on Trumpet

Darwin Grosse graciously joined us again and utilized the power of the dancers and musicians for his piece, Leg Work.  Each laptop recorded a small, random section of a score onto a cheap handheld recorder.  Then this was looped by simply holding the play button down with a clip.  These recorders were then distributed throughout the audience, creating a surrealistic surround soundscape of the score.  John Drumheller and John Gunther also provided a number of interesting and unique compositions to the table, as they always do.

Edited, High Quality Video

Special thanks to John Gunther, John Drumheller, Darwin Grosse, Cole Ingraham, Synthia Payne for documenting, Hugh Ragin (Trumpet), Darren Kramer (Ableton - wow), Ed Breazeale (Drums), Stephen Thurston (Bass), Cody St. Arnold (Ableton live looping, electric trombone, Lemur - wow), Sabrina Cavins, Katie Key, Skye Hughes, Julie Murphy, plus other members of the CU jazz and dance departments.