Sunday With Our Good Friends:

ANALOG arts ensemble and Monument Piano Trio
An Die Musik
409 N. Charles Street (2nd Fl), Baltimore
Sunday, February 30
3 PM
$20 ($15 Seniors/$10 Students)

PROGRAM
Michael Sheppard, Let Beauty Awake
Jonathan Leshnoff, Song Without Words
James Lee III, Scenes from Eternity's Edge*
Stuart Saunders Smith, Part
Rudolf Kamper, Music for Five Players*

* world premiere

PERSONNEL
Marcia Kamper, flute
Rudolf Kamper, trumpet
Michael Sheppard, piano
Dariusz Skoraczewski, cello
Igor Yuzefovich, violin

Dolf assembled a program of Baltimore music for our show this Sunday with members Monument Piano Trio. It's a nice mix of styles, ranging between the twin poles of the moment: modernism and romanticism.

We're giving the first performances of two new works on Sunday. Dolf's is a texture for the full ensemble. He describes it as contemplative, which surely can't have anything to do with the newborn baby that's been dominating his daily life.

The other premiere was arranged through Monument Trio's agent, who came across a wonderful local composer and professor at Morgan State. James Lee writes a great deal of music inspired by the Bible, and Scenes Upon Eternity’s Edge deals specifically with the eschatological aspects of the Good Book, particularly the books of Revelation and Daniel. Even though he was writing for us, we swear we didn't force him to deal with Michael's battle with the dragon in Revelation. (We promise: no formulas!)

It's always a pleasure to work with Monument, and Sunday's concert is really a windup for the other concerts we'll do at An Die Musik this spring, including a CD release party for Dariusz' solo debut.

Longplayer Live update

Some more updates over at The Long Now Blog on the Longplayer Live project.



Jem Finer’s 1000 year composition Longplayer moved from virtual instruments to real ones on Saturday, September 12th at the Roundhouse in London. He amassed a collection of musicians to perform an excerpt from the piece over the course of the day, filling the main performance space of the venue with the pulsing, metallic voices of Tibetan singing bowls for 1000 minutes.


Dressed in blue-gray army surplus style uniforms, the musicians gave the place the look of a Bond villain’s lair, some kind of mysterious, devious activity going on. Even so, the result was child-friendly, plenty of young ‘uns running around, or falling asleep in their parents’ arms, Zenned-out by the chiming bowls.

Downstairs something less abstract was happening – a series of conversations (each 36 minutes long) between a host of scientists, journalists, historians, mathematicians and more. These had their own ebb and flow, some pairings warming up right before they were gonged out, others getting straight into it, clearly having researched their partner/opponent and wanting to have some fun.

The talks provided a great accompaniment to the music above, the participants clearly aware that this event was somewhat to do with long-term thinking, but not hammering the point. Upstairs again, and the music played into the night, sonically and visually elegant, and one of the most unusual things to be found in London on a Saturday night.

Our Man in Japan - coming soon!

The concert Our Man in Japan features ANALOG member Jason Taylor who is visiting Baltimore from Nagoya, Japan. Composer and guitarist, Jason Taylor, holds degrees and awards from Peabody and the Virginia Carty deLillo Competition, among others. His music has been performed world wide and has been published by Homadream, GuitarDream magazine, and recorded by the German duo CordAria.

The concert on August 7, at An Die Musik will also include a large chamber ensemble with your favorite ANALOG artists from Baltimore and New York for an eclectic mix of new and old music.

Durations I - 1962 recording

Durations I 1960-1
Don Hammond - Alto Flute
Don Butterfield - Tuba
David Tudor - Piano
Philip Kraus - Vibraphone
Matthw Raimondi - Violin
David Soyer - Cello

"My earliest recollection of music - I couldn't have been more than five - is my mother holding one of my fingers and picking out "Eli Eli" with it on the piano. Like almost everyone else, my early teachers were very bad. At the age of twelve, however, I was fortunate enough to come under the tutelage of Madam Maurina-Press, a Russian aristocrat who earned her living after the revolution by teaching piano and by playing in a trio with her husband and brother-in-law. In fact, they were quite well known in those days. It was because of her - only, I think, because she was not a disciplinarian - that I was instilled with a sort of vibrant msuicality rather than musicianship...

...Durations - a series of five instrumental pieces, for of which are recorded here. In "Piece for Four Pianos" and others like it, the instruments all read from teh same part - and so what you have is like a series of reverberations from an identical sound source. In "Durations" I arrive at a more complex style where each instrument is living out is own individual sound world.

In each piece the instruments being simultaneously, and are then free to choose their own durations within a given general tempo. The sounds themselves are designated.

The pieces, while looking identical on paper, were actually conceived quite differently. In "Durations I" the quality of the particular instruments together suggested a closely written kaleidescope of sound. To achieve this I wrote each voice individually, choosing intervals that seemed to erase or cancel out each sound as soon as we hear the next..."

Paolo Angeli

ANALOG @ The Red Room Tonight

We're playing at the Red Room tonight, opening for Pamplemousse. The show includes original music for tuba and theremin, Robert Ashley and Stockhausen, and one of the members of the ensemble will be a visual artist projecting his interpretations of the scores throughout.

The Red Room
at Normals Books and Records
425 E. 31st Street Baltimore
Doors open at 8:30
$6

Program
Karlheinz Stockhausen, IT
Karlheinz Stockhausen, INTENSITY
Dolf Kämper, PULSATING STARS...
Robert Ashley SHE WAS A VISITOR

PERFORMERS
Cody Griffith, visual artist
Dolf Kämper, trumpet & theremin
Alex Muehleisen, tuba
Nick Mazziott, trombone

He Was A Visitor

He Was A Visitor began as a joint project between Baltimore performing musicians and visual artists from the Maryland Institute College of Art. ANALOG arts ensemble will present a program of selections from Stockhausen's From the Seven Days, Rudolf Kämper's Pulsating Stars Enable New Precise Determination of the Rotation of the Milky Way, as well as an audience participation version of Robert Ashley's She Was A Visitor. Visual artist Cody Griffith is our visitor in the ensemble. He will be working from the same descriptive score as the musicians to create an intuitive realization, not as an accompaniment but as another member of the ensemble.

Below is a short interview with the visual artist...

Cody: As someone who does not play an instrument, I will perform with visual media, keeping in my that my pen will be my instrument. It is difficult to translate Stockhausen's concepts into a language of imagery. Many questions have to be asked concerning the stability of this idea. I have practiced intuitive drawing before and will try to remain true to Stockhausen's ideas.

Dolf: Normally, when visual artists and musicians collaborate, an animator is given a tape and asked to interpret what they hear - or, a composer is given an existing film and asked to find music the compliment what they see. This time, you and the musicians are working from the same score. What are some of the ways you would interpret the score that are different than the musicians?

Cody: As a visual artist, upon hearing music, I create imagery in my mind. These images often begin in an abstract form and then move into the figurative.

Dolf: Have you been involved in improvised or intuitive drawing before? How about drawing/painting in public performance?

Cody: Warren Linn, a professor at Maryland Institute College of Art, worked with me on improvised drawing for years, whether it be from sound or a visual journalism. I have also done portrait work at community art festivals and painted public murals.

Dolf: You are also presenting some film for one of the pieces. What was your thought process in coming up with the material for that piece?

Cody: I look at Stan Brakhage a lot. I tried to focus on the silence and chaos of nature.

He Was A Visitor will be presented at Normal's Books as part of the RedRoom series, March 14, 8:30pm. See www.redroom.org for more info.

Baltimore's RedRoom

I finally had a chance to check out the very cool local hangout: RedRoom at Normal's Books and Music. I picked a good night too. Tim Kaiser of Make Magazine fame was there with his handmade electronic instruments.



Imagine a LIVE electronic music concert... one where there something to watch other than speakers. Tim's performance is part musical, part sculptural, and part conceptual. He will swirl tubes, twiddle knobs, wave his hands, and move his light wand to control the electronic noises.

Like any good Maker, Tim is proud and excited to explain each of his creations in detail after the performance. When I took a closer look at his toys, I was able to admire the incredible detail. I noticed that he even made a yellowed-with-age instruction manual for one of his stranger creations, encased in an oak box.

The trip was a lot of fun. Definitely a cool hangout for anyone in the Baltimore area!

Dolf Kamper

new works

I updated my website at www.dolfkamper.org (click on "aural")

Some new works:

Transmissions from Deep Space (2008)

Pulsating Stars Enable New Precise Determination of the Rotation of the Milky Way (2008)

"This next song doesn't go something like this, it goes EXACTLY like this..."

gelanstrifibramacon (2007)

(Steven Wright's joke)

diy synthesizers

The world of DIY and opensource electronic music is truly astounding. Not only can the intrepid find performance-quality classic instruments in kit form in an affordable price (from the likes of http://paia.com/) but there is also a wealth of information on sound experiments of every kind.

Here is an interesting site I just came accross that indexes open-source or DIY synthesizers.

http://www.synthdiy.com/



www.dolfkamper.org

mellotron anyone?

ANALOGers and ANAblog'ers are busy doing some research for a Circuit Bending event. This is a vast culture of tinkerers and musicians that take ready-made objects and wire them to make new and interesting sounds.

Somewhat related are items such as the melotron which gives you real-time sample playing in the era of room-sized computers.

Here are some words: http://www.believermag.com/issues/200706/?read=article_collins

and here are some moving pictures:

Cuckoo Clock ringtone

In case you don't get enough cuckoo in your life, North Coast Imports offers the following two ringtones FREE OF CHARGE. Just download the proper file into your phone and hear a North Coast Imports ring every time someone calls! Both of these files are taken from the Rombach und Haas Glass Bell Cuckoo model #3400 or #3402 found on page 22 of the NCI orange Cuckoo Catalog #50. The "Glass Bell Cuckoo" is a pure recording of the clock striking and calling and the "Cuckoo Ring Tone" is conglomeration of sounds based on that cuckoo call (put together by myself).

Cuckoo Ring Tone
mp3
amr
qcp
mmf

Glass Bell Cuckoo
mp3
amr
qcp
mmf

mechanical lullabye

Marinetti learned to love the gears and gas of the 20th Century. This old engine from a 1912 Mercedes has a sound so soothing and organic it would soothe the most disruptive beast.

Heather Frasch