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Contemporary Chamber Music - Part 2 (The Lappetites)

Can four laptops sharing data and sounds make a quartet?

Yes, The Lappetites is a group made of four accomplished women artists demonstrating so.

It is possible to listen to a couple of tracks taken from their dense ‘Before the Libretto’ CD, clicking here and here.

Music is never easy to describe. Theirs makes no exception. I am full of admiration for those who have managed, so here you find few pertinent quotes from different reviews:

BBC review Tzungentwist” speaks in tongues and made up languages. It’s full of phonemes, guttural exclamations and limpid hisses. Someone stumbles amusingly as they try to pronounce Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry (who doesn’t?).

Onda Rock E’ un’elettronica algidamente emozionale, frastagliata di espressionismo e strutturata secondo l’emblema di un caotico convergere verso la pienezza del senso. Battono il tempo sinistre scansioni tribaloidi (si veda anche il pastiche di “Kuchen Keiki Cake”), diffuse e deformate dentro l’avvolgersi tenebroso delle voci (”Birken”).

SoNHoRS Nourries de ces expériences multiples, nos quatre sculpteurs de micro-sons nous offrent, sur ce premier disque en commun, un opéra électronique raffiné, composé de murmures vocaux, de mélopées aiguës, d’interférences numériques, de collages sonores et autres montages électroacoustiques inventifs dans lequel les gymnastiques du larynx occupent une place primordiale (j’en veux pour preuve la troublante pochette!).

themilkfactory A mini-orchestra of microscopic fragments, from shrill squeaks to grainy throbs and shards of static debris [...]. Oftentimes, the musicians do not seem to be occupying the same harmonic and rhythmic space. And yet, despite this tendency, sounds don’t appear bald or hoarse. Instead, this lack of relation becomes the fertile ground on which movements grow and develop.

almost cool In fact, this release may very well be one of the more fractured albums I’ve heard in a long, long time, sounding like a glitched-out art installation project that combines improvised laptop mashes, found sound, spoken word, deconstructed hip-hop, ambient, and several other styles all run through the sonic blender.

What can I add?

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Karl Rossmann, The Composer Who Disappeared

Listening to Last.fm allows me to discover authors that I had never heard of before. As previously with Hans Otte, I found out another composer I did not know already and that at first attracted the favours of my musical judgement.

This is the case of Karl Rossmann, apparently an author who mainly operated between the two world wars and that is supposed to have had contacts with Karol Szymanowski, Alfredo Casella and even Alfred Schnittke.

You might wonder why I do say “apparently”. For two reason:

• There is very little information around this composer and not a real biography
• To me his music sounds much more recent of what it is supposed to be. You can listen to it going to this page and judge for yourself

Maybe somebody has invented it all for some reasons? I have been investigating a bit and this is what I found:

- A ‘kind of’ biography, containing the very few information I found on the web about Karl Rossmann
- A dedicated page on MySpace.com
- An art project called Autopsia, featuring a CD that I would have loved to buy but that I cannot find
- The trumpet player in a rather original Austrian brass pop band called Global Kryner
- A video on youtube documenting an opening speech by a visibly young Karl Rossman (missing a trailing ‘n’) at Årsta Folkets Hus 2007, aimed to convince people to join a theatre company. In the video Karl Rossman says he did it in 1927 (sic!)

To finish maybe it is worth to remember that Karl Rossmann is mainly known as the main character of Kafka’s “Amerika”. Amerika is also known as Der Verschollene or The Man Who Disappeared…

What are your thoughts about this?

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David Morneau, 60×365 composer

Making a new short piece of music each day is certainly a good exercise for a composer. David Morneau has done it for one year and has published his daily sixty seconds of music on his own blog, called 60×365.

In his podcast, there are a lot of very interesting short compositions. You can just pick up a day in his calender and listen to one. Don’t forget to check out the final one, a very powerful collage of endings.

You can find more information about his experience here.

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AXiS-64 pro MIDI controller

Among the innovative instruments that I have seen around recently, the one I am going to present here is probably not the most intuitive for the end user. Instruments like the Kaossilator, the Reactable and the Tenori-On all share (at least) the attempt to have new user interfaces that can also be approached by the non-musician.

The AXiS-64 pro MIDI controller has got an innovative keyboard arranged over an Harmonic Table note
layout. A new user can soon produce a good quantity of notes on it, but apart from some initial
excitement, I guess she could not unleash its full power without having a prior significant amount of musical knowledge.

There are several new music possibilities given by such a keyboard. You can find a considerable amount of information on the C-Thru Music website and especially watching the very instructive videos that Jordan Rudess has made to present the AXiS-64.

ATTOW, it costs $1,700.

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Elena Casoli

I have met Elena Casoli almost twenty years ago in Northern Italy during some guitar Master Classes held by Ruggero Chiesa, a deeply missed classical guitar teacher. I remember Elena Casoli as a very talented performer of contemporary music, somebody able to passionate the public with the execution of complex compositions, always played with ease and spontaneity.

She is actually a multi-instrumentalists able to pass from early to contemporary music on a range of different instruments.

I have recently found out on YouTube few videos of hers. In the two I am proposing here she is playing the electric guitar, creating sounds and musical patterns that get edited by the authors of the compositions, Maurizio Pisati and Michele Tadini. Both videos are set in Teatro Fondamenta Nuove in Venice and directed by Gianni Di Capua.

Enjoy!

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Contemporary Chamber Music - Part 1 (Stockhausen)

I have always been very keen on chamber music. From Haydn’s to Berg’s and up to the contemporary classical ensembles I have always found myself passionated about few instruments and musicians getting together and melting their sounding performances.

Musica da Camera has considerably evolved during times. Passing from the simple practice of few friends making music together in the same room, now the limits are well stretched and we have got some compositions that go well beyond the limitation of space that originally was intrinsic to the Chamber Music.

One very important example is Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Helicopter String Quartet”, where a string quartet is flying over the audience in four separate helicopters.

The following video is taken from a DVD released on May 2008. It first shows Karlheinz Stockhausen talking about his dreams about flying. Then there is a small part related to the preparation of the helicopter quartet performance.

More info about this surely unusual composition can be found here.

Posted in Ensembles, Karlheinz Stockhausen, String Quartet | No Comments »

Zizzle Zoundz - A tangible music toy

Not long time ago, while having a look at tangible musical interfaces such as the Reactable, I found out about a curious musical toy called Zizzle Zounds.

After having seen a few videos about it I ordered one and I still find it somehow interesting. Surely it is not a real instrument and it has got some severe limitations, however it is an immediately playable music interface and it has been punctually attracting the attention of friends at my place. Even my (less-than) 2 year old boy likes it, despite his attention level not going further 3-4 minutes (after that he starts to launch the pawns around).

Below you find a couple of video showing Zizzle Zounds in action. They will give you an idea of what Zizzle Zounds looks and sounds like.

Posted in Instruments, Music Toys, Zizzle Zounds | 1 Comment »

Hans Otte, enchanting simplicity

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to an online radio station when some very attractive music came to my ears. The radio plug-in showed the name of Hans Otte. Never heard about him before. I made a quick search on Google and found out that he lived for 81 years until the end of year 2007. It looks like he has been active in the classical contemporary music world but he did not get very famous in Europe. I decided to buy a CD containing the piece I was listening to and to look for more music of his. What I have been finding is rather interesting.

Even if his music was composed before year 2000 (this breaking one of the main rules of my blog) I think he deserves greater notoriety, so here you go my very little contribute.

This is a video featuring an Australian pianist and composer, Andrew Chubb, playing the piece that caught my attention first.

On YouTube I also found a video that is using excerpts from a couple of Hans Otte’s compositions, “minimum : maximum” and “orient : occident”.

Here there is an audio file from “minimum : maximum”.

WNYC also has got an interview with Hans Otte dating 1996. It contains excerpts from “The Book of Sounds”, played for the occasion by the composer himself and part of his work “Aquarian Music”, played by harpist Cecilia Chailly. You can listen to it clicking here.

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Kaossilator, pocketable music

I just ordered a Korg Kaossilator.

I don’t have it yet but I know few basic things about it. It is a Touch Pad Musical Synthesizer that can fit in your pockets and runs off of 4 AA batteries. It can produce a wide range of sounds and you can plug your headphones on to make your own music.

As it features several synthesized sounds and supports 31 different Scale Patterns, along with a gate arpeggiator and a loop function, Kaossilator can be used to easily create danceable beats or maybe to enhance the toolbox of a professional DJ.

I also wonder how an instrument like this could be used by somebody keen on “classical contemporary music” and I think I will try that. Also I am curious to see how my very young child reacts to it (no smashing, please!).

For the moment here you can find a 10 min video showing few functions and some usage.

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Tenori-On, 16×16 leds = Music!

Another crazy music interface is Tenori-On’s, designed and created by artist Toshio Iwai in collaboration with Yu Nishibori from Yamaha Center for Advanced Sound Technology.

In short, it is a handheld musical sequencer that the player can drive through of a sixteen by sixteen grid of LED switch buttons. A video can explain better than one thousand words, so have a look at the main demo of the product:

If you got curious and want to know in detail how Tenori-On works, you can consult the online manual.

Tenori-On produces sounds without being attached to a computer but, if you are not happy about the quality of the built-in soundset or if you want to get more, the video below can give you an idea of what could be achieved making Tenori-On functioning purely as a sequencer with external equipment (in this case Kyma, Ableton Live, Andromeda and Prophet ‘08).

Tenori-on Meets Kyma from Nomad Cinema on Vimeo.

The instrument was launched in London on September 4th, 2007. The suggested retail price was around $1,200.

I wouldn’t mind it as a present, would you?

Posted in Tenori-On, Toshio Iwai, Yamaha | No Comments »