Wow, what a week. Pendulum followed by blOrk only two days later. The Pendulum New Music Series showcases new works from composers at CU, and this month's performance had a very eclectic bill. This installation of Pendulum included these world premiers:
Kari Kraakevik - Canyons Leading Home: Los Angeles to Lost Angel (2010)
Keane Southard - Two Symmetries for Disklavier (2010)
Cole Ingraham - Chaos Geometry (2010)
Leanna Kirchoff - The House Explodes
Hunter Ewen - Invasion of the Monkey Mind (2010)
Also featuring "Open Score," an audience-participation piece with Paul Miller and Jeff Nytch.
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| Poster |
Keane's studies for the Disklavier (digital player piano) were very interesting to develop. I helped him to arrange the piece and we pushed the limits of Disklavier, blowing two of the 7 amp fuses during rehearsals. I have used this piano many times for different projects, and I learned an incredible amount about how to push the limits of the piano. We ran MIDI signals from Sibelius into the piano. Unfortunately, we had issues with the first dozen or so notes of each composition, so I added a chromatic wash at the beginning of each piece. I liked that this actually provided a common thread between the two pieces, and interestingly enough, each wash came out different each time. That was a bit disconcerting, but we pulled it off without a hitch. Here is a bit of video, sorry for the poor quality... I just got a Zoom Q3HD, and the digital zoom isn't as good as I was hoping.
Cole's piece, Chaos Geometry is a 5.1 surround sound with animation. Sounds were created with an old analog mixing console and a theremin. The animations were rendered in Blender and I believe Cole said some frames took as long as 7 minutes each to render. (I also believe he went for the full 30 fps). A full video and stereo mix is available on his Vimeo Page.
The House Explodes is a piece composed by Leanna Kirchoff for Hsing-ay Hsu. Leanna's focus was on 10 note patterns and chords. She bases this off of the fact that we are (normally) born with only 10 fingers, despite having a 12 note scale. Hsing-ay did an excellent job performing this (see the video for an excerpt) and the lighting changes were a welcome addition to the performance.
Another very interesting concept piece was presented next. Paul Miller performed an improvisatory piece on Viola and Viola d'Amore (unfortunately not at the same time :). His improvisations were based on a score created by the audience as they entered the space. I really love this concept, and think that Paul did an excellent job under such immense pressure.
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| Copy of audience composed, Open Score |
