ImproTech Paris-Philly :: Concert #1
Dec. 11th, 8pm Prince Theater, Annenberg Center for the Performing arts : 3680 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19104
LaDonna Smith, Susan Alcorn, Miya Masaoka (violin / viola, pedal steel, one-string koto, electronics)
Roscoe Mitchell + Bob Ostertag (reeds, sampler)
David Rosenboom : The Right Measure of Opposites (piano, spatialization system, computer interaction)
Steve Lehman + Hprizm (saxophone, voice, electronics)
Bernard Lubat + Marc Chemillier & Gérard Assayag (piano / voice, Omax/ImproteK agents)
Bob Ostertag (Gamepad and Aalto)
Marie Kimura, György Kurtág Jr, Pierre Couprie (violin,synths,computer interaction)
Hatchers aka Michael Barker, Brian Osborne (electronics, drums)
Farid Barron (piano)
ImproTech is an international event bringing together, across several continents , artists and researchers motivated by the question of creative improvised interactions between human and machines of all sorts, from DIY analog devices to digital intelligence softwares.
In ImproTech Paris-Philly :: Concert #1, a staggering sample of such creative alloys will be displayed by unique performers, featuring legendary figures of free improvisation Roscoe Mitchell, Bob Ostertag, and Bernard Lubat ; experimental music icons David Rosenboom and Michael Young ; renowned favourites of the new scene, Steve Lehman, LaDonna Smith, Susan Alcorn, Miya Masaoka, Mari Kimura, Hatchers, György Kurtág Jr, Pierre Couprie, all these interacting with classical live-electronics, analog (or virtual) synths, mathematical / musical algorithmics, artificial intelligence agents, spatialization systems, or hybrid instruments.
David Rosenboom
The Right Measure of Opposites (1998 and 2017 update)
Soloist: computer-electronics with algorithmic software instruments, computer-interfaced piano (Yamaha DisklavierTM grand), sound spatialization system
The Right Measure of Opposites originated in a twelve-part, concert-length work for piano written in 1998, called Bell Solaris (Twelve Movements for Piano) Transformations of a Theme. The scored materials resulted from ideas about transformation and systems of evolution, which formed a model for what I refer to as propositional music. This model suggests ways in which the work’s musical DNA—expressed in the contours of melody, rhythm, timbre, and dynamics—might evolve further, through both adjacent and contingent possibilities, via real-time, algorithmic procedures residing in the performer’s instrument. So the model becomes an instrument, and the work is always renewed in every performance. (Such models might also facilitate co-creative emergence, potentially helpful in countering the culturally debilitating, over-rampant individualism now threatening human sustainability.) For this updated version, these means of transformation are extended further via electronic sounds, and the interpretation of the score is opened to enable free interactions with them. As a result, continuously transforming, musical contours intertwine in a system of counterpoint that links musical shapes up and down a holarchy of forms, from tiny details in individual sounds to larger shapes in the complete performance. The score for The Right Measure . . . presents long and short notes set in an underlying 3-beat time feeling with the tempo indication, “Very fast moving and disjunct.” Further suggestions to the performer appear at various places in the form of texts: “Moisture-water”, “Chaos—fire”, “Warmth”, “Like the age of childhood,” “Emergence,” and at the end, “Formula for creation—the combination of the right measure of opposites.” In this music, small and large forms may emerge anew; ready to instill the joy of discovery in active creative listeners with big open ears.
