Pg 8 Pg 1 This Is the Premiere Recording of the Magnetic Resonator Piano, an Electronically-Augmented Acoustic Grand Piano T
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pg 8 pg 1 This is the premiere recording of the magnetic resonator piano, an electronically-augmented acoustic grand piano that uses electromagnets to elicit new sounds from the piano strings. pg 2 pg 7 KINEMATICS The viola soloist is differentiated from the RecoRDING INfoRMatioN ackNoWleDGMents Webster’s Dictionary defines kinematics as “the resonance by an exaggerated vocal style of branch of mechanics that deals with pure mo- playing, emphasizing pitch bends, glissandos All tracks recorded and produced by Ryan This project is supported by the New Music tion, without reference to the masses or forces and microtonal inflections. In a way, this Streber at Oktaven Audio, Yonkers, NY. USA’s CAP Recording Program, made pos- involved in it.” This term borrowed from piece can be heard as a struggle between the Kinematics recorded March 1, 2011; d’Amore sible by endowment funds from the Mary physics seems like a good match for a piece individuality of the soloist and the mecha- recorded March 25, 2011; Secrets of Antikythera Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and with funds which is constantly in motion. The violin nized nature of the resonance-- a struggle recorded October 25-27, 2011. d’Amore and from The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia has always struck me as the most kinetic of which always resolves in favor of the soloist. Secrets of Antikythera recorded on a Steinway University. instruments, and this piece draws its energy d’Amore was written for Nadia Sirota in D piano provided by Klavierhaus, New York, particularly from the bow, with rapid pas- summer 2009 and premiered by her in Phila- NY. This project is supported in part by the Ameri- sagework and sharp spiccato strokes. The tone delphia, PA on November 22nd, 2009. can Composers Forum, Philadelphia Chapter. is alternately intense and joyous, while leaving All pieces published by Andrew McPherson room for lyrical material along the way. As the SECRETS OF ANTIKYTHERA Music (ASCAP). Innova is supported by an endowment from piece develops, the basic pulse increasingly Secrets of Antikythera takes its inspiration the McKnight Foundation. fluctuates, with steady meters giving way to from the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Philip Blackburn: director, design irregular and shifting groupings before finally mechanical device for plotting the position Chris Campbell: operations manager settling into a determined sprint at the end. of the planets in the night sky. Discovered in Steve McPherson: publicist Kinematics was written for Martin Shultz in an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of www.innova.mu 2008; Martin gave the premiere performance Antikythera in the early 20th century, its func- on April 24th, 2008 in Baltimore, MD. tion was not discovered until decades later. The mechanism is remarkable for its precision D’AMORE and sophistication, the likes of which had The title d’Amore comes from the viola never been seen before were not seen again for d’amore, a baroque instrument with six or centuries. seven bowed strings and an equal number of In this piece, I imagine the creator of this sympathetic strings. The sympathetic strings device, whose identity will likely never be are not played by the performer at all but known. What joys and sorrows must this per- instead resonate sympathetically with the son have encountered while undertaking such bowed strings, producing a warm tone with a remarkable project? The prologue attempts natural reverberation. In d’Amore, I use the to capture the sense of wonder at the night sky magnetic resonator piano as a giant collection that might have inspired the creation of this of sympathetic strings: notes played on the device. Beginning in the second movement, a viola are sustained and reverberated by the simple, slowly spinning melodic idea emerges. piano strings, leaving behind perpetually- In each successive movement, this idea is pro- shifting harmonic clouds. gressively refined until reaching its final form pg 6 pg 3 clude infinite sustain, crescendos from silence, In Secrets of Antikythera, the instrument in Movement VIII, “Vision fulfilled.” finally, 2004 Sudler Prize in the Arts. He subsequent- pitch bends, harmonics and new timbres, all is configured with two keyboards including the epilogue presents the preceding ideas as ly worked in Barry Vercoe’s computer music produced acoustically by the piano strings a MIDI keyboard placed atop the piano. The they might appear over a vast gap in time: cor- group at the MIT Media Lab, completing a without any external speakers or amplifica- main piano keyboard controls both tradi- roded, obscured, with only the bare outlines Master’s degree in engineering in 2005. tion. By manipulating the acoustic properties tional piano sounds and resonators. The top still distinguishable. Andrew completed his Ph.D. in music of the piano itself, the MRP acquires the rich- keyboard controls only the resonators; it is The prologue is played entirely with composition at the University of Pennsyl- ness and resonance of the piano in which it is used periodically in the piece to produce a magnetic resonator sounds; as the piece goes vania in 2009, where his teachers included installed, including the sympathetic vibrations different timbre to the main keyboard, or to along, the resonators gradually give way James Primosch, Jay Reise, Anna Weesner, between the strings. play extended passages without hammers. to the piano until Movement VIII is played and Maurice Wright. He has attended the The musical goal of the magnetic resona- The MRP can also be played from a single entirely without electronics. Finally, the Tanglewood, Aspen, Cabrillo, Bowdoin, and tor piano is to allow the pianist to continuous- keyboard, where the continuous motion of the resonators return in the epilogue, sometimes N.E.O.N. music festivals, and has won awards ly shape every note as a violinist might, while piano keys controls both piano and resonators. complementing the traditional piano material, including a 2008 Charles Ives Scholarship maintaining the piano’s natural polyphony. d’Amore uses the magnetic resonator piano but sometimes obscuring it. from the American Academy of Arts and To enable this continuous control, an optical no pianist. The pedal is held down throughout Secrets of Antikythera was written in 2009 letters, the 2009 Jacob Druckman Prize from sensor strip (based on a modified Moog Piano the piece, and pitch-tracking on the viola is alongside development of the magnetic reso- Aspen, the 2009-2010 Symphony in C Young Bar) is placed on the keyboard which records used to selectively resonate strings inside the nator piano. The original performances were Composer’s Competition, and grants from the the continuous position of each key, in con- piano. given by Steven Beck in Philadelphia, PA on American Composers Forum and American trast to typical MIDI keyboards which record In 2011, six composers and three pianists November 22nd, 2009 and Sandra Gu in Palo Music Center. His compositions have been only presses and releases. A laptop computer in the Philadelphia area participated in a Alto, CA on May 26th, 2010. performed by Network for New Music, the maps key position data to electromagnet project to write and perform new music for Radius Ensemble, the American Composers signals, but all musical control is from the magnetic resonator piano. The pieces were Orchestra, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, the keyboard and the performer never interacts performed in December 2011 and the results Tanglewood New Fromm Players, the BUTI with the computer directly. described in an article in Computer Music Andrew McPherson is Wind Ensemble, and the MIT Symphony and Journal (vol. 36 no. 4, 2012). Development a composer, engineer Chamber Orchestras, among others. of the instrument continues at Queen Mary, and instrument designer After the PhD, as the recipient of a University of London. working in the Centre Computing Innovation Fellows award from for Digital Music at the Computing Research Association and Queen Mary, University the National Science Foundation, he worked of London. He did his for two years as a postdoctoral researcher at undergraduate work at Drexel University in the Music Entertainment MIT, studying composi- Technology laboratory (MET-lab), directed tion with Peter Child and John Harbison and by Youngmoo Kim. In September 2011, he viola with Marcus Thompson. A double major joined Queen Mary, University of London as in music and electrical engineering, he gradu- Lecturer in Digital Media, where he a member ated Phi Beta Kappa and was awarded the of the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM), a pg 4 pg 5 research group within the School of Electronic new-music ensemble, in the premieres of sev- Deems Taylor award in radio and internet slaw Kaper awards, and was recipient of the Engineering and Computer Science. His eral new works. Shultz has also participated broadcasting, Nadia’s show was recently 2011 outstanding Graduate award from the research interests include electronically-aug- in the Music Masters Festival of Japan and described by Alex Ross (The Rest is Noise, The University of Southern California’s Thornton mented acoustic instruments, new perfor- the Pacific Music festival, where he served as New Yorker) as “radio we can believe in.” School of Music. McCullough has studied pri- mance interfaces and computational modeling concertmaster. As a soloist, he has performed marily with John Perry and Deborah Clasquin. of expressive performance, and he has taught with the Peabody Camerata, Tanglewood Ryan MacEvoy courses ranging