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Totally Huge New Music Festival 2013


 Da Contents H2

THNMF2013
October 14 2013
New music: celebration & angst
Matthew Lorenzon: Totally Huge New Music Festival overview


August 22 2013
The sound of reading
Matthew Lorenzon: David Toop with Decibel

August 18 2013
A pyrrhic revolt
Matthew Lorenzon: Latitude: Perspectives, WA Symphony Orchestra

THNMF2013
Complexity from simple tools
John Barton: ICMC, Percussion and Live Electronics

August 16 2013
Acoustic space: explicit object
Steve Paraskos: di Scipio, Curran


Pianos wired
John Barton: Works for piano and electronics

August 15 2013
Bridges and deviations
Matthew Lorenzon: di Scipio, Curran, Haco, Burt

August 14 2013
Madness, hell and transcendence
John Barton: Michael Kieran Harvey

Programming a grotesque order
Matthew Lorenzon: Michael Kieran Harvey

August 12 2013
A choreography of oscillation
Matthew Lorenzon: Speak Percussion, Robin Fox, Transducer

Explorers of an alien planet
John Barton: Speak Percussion, Robin Fox, Transducer

August 11 2013
Celestial sweet spots
Steve Paraskos, Haco, Ourobonic Plague, Barn Owl

Churches of sound
John Barton, Haco, Ourobonic Plague, Barn Owl

Eclectic ecstasies
Matthew Lorenzon, Haco, Ourobonic Plague, Barn Owl

 

Michael Kieran Harvey, works for piano and electronics, THNMF13 Michael Kieran Harvey, works for piano and electronics, THNMF13
photo Brad Serls
In the International Computer Music Conference’s second concert’s works for piano with live electronics, pianist Michael Kieran Harvey attacked each work with inimitable energy and precision.

Takayuki Rai’s Discrete Transfer extends the piano beyond its usual gestures with live electronics, utilising a fragmented musical language that often resembles the piano works of Iannis Xenakis. Robert Seaback’s seed.signal. for piano and live electronics presents a Varèse-esque montage of sound objects both on the piano and via electronics, creating a brooding atmosphere with dark, rich chords interrupted by electrical ‘shocks.’

Stuart James, Aaron Wyatt, Tristen Parr performing Daniel Mayer's Lokale Orbit/Trio 1 for violin, cello, piano and electronics, THNMF13 Stuart James, Aaron Wyatt, Tristen Parr performing Daniel Mayer's Lokale Orbit/Trio 1 for violin, cello, piano and electronics, THNMF13
photo Brad Serls
Austrian-born Daniel Mayer’s Lokale Orbit/Trio 1 for violin, cello, piano and electronics changed the tone of the evening. Utilising hand-muted strings inside the piano, Mayer created a repeating pattern from which his entire piece was built. Using electronic reverberations from the string instruments, Mayer then generated an acousmatic soundscape, the sounds of the instruments becoming unrecognisable in their processed forms.

With reference to Helmut Lachenmann’s seminal composition Guero, Anthony Lyons’ Trace Elements I/II for piano and electronics began with the keys themselves as its point of departure. Electronically amplifying and reverberating the sound of Harvey’s hands running over the keys while he played a simple, yet fragmented, melodic line, Trace Elements I demonstrates that the piano is indeed a percussion instrument. Trace Elements II moved in a different direction, focussing on a simple harmonic triad and using microphones to resonate its partials through the theatre. After a very creative first movement, the second lacked the same creative drive, falling short on engagement and experimentation.

After the piano works, Julien-Robert Legault Salvail’s Fit into the crowd for bass clarinet and video took as its point of departure video and audio of a large crowd. As the clarinettist played behind the screen, the video faded so that she appeared to emerge from the crowd. Engaging in a debate with the chaotic voices of the crowd, the bass clarinet became a voice of expression, exposing the barrier between public and private and negotiating questions of individualisation in a world where the voice of the self can so easily become lost.


International Computer Music Conference, Totally Huge New Music Festival, Works for Piano and Electronics, State Theatre Centre, 12 August

© John Barton; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]

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