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Other performances of works on RoboRecital:
- Three Studies for Automated Organ
- 2/23/04, Paul Hall, The Juilliard School
- Two Studies for Player Piano
- Beyond the Machine 3
Chelsea Art Museum
April 20, 2005 - MATA: EX MACHINA
Paula Cooper Gallery
521 West 21st Street, 2nd Floor
May 11, 2004 - Tides (human-performable version)
- 11/14/04, St. Andrew’s Methodist Church, Transit Collective: New Music for Piano
Arthur Abadi, Piano - 11/21/2004, Tenri Cultural Institute, Composition, Interpretation, Improvisation: Opus One
Steve Beck, Piano
- 11/14/04, St. Andrew’s Methodist Church, Transit Collective: New Music for Piano
- Four Studies for GuitarBot
- July 27, 2006, VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
Mari Kimura, Solo Recital with LEMUR, St. Christopher Festival, Lithuania - October 5, 2006, Guanjuato, MEXICO
Mari Kimura, Solo Recital performing interactive works for violin and robots
Internacíonal Festival Cervantino - July 16th, 2006, Schenectady Museum, NEW YORK
Mari Kimura, Solo Violin Recital with LEMUR - February 23-25, 2006, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
Concert/Lectures at Making New Waves Festival in Budapest
Mari Kimura, Solo Recital performing interactive works for violin and robots - LEMUR and Mari Kimura
Audio Art Festival
Krakow, Poland
November 13, 2004
Audio Art Festival Website - LEMUR and Mari Kimura
Infiltrations Digitales/Brussels Media Art Festival
Brussels, Belgium
November 10, 2004
Infiltrations Digitales Website - LIVE-I YEAR:0
An Evening of Multimedia Performance
Williamsburg Art Nexus
205 N 7th Street, Brooklyn
October 24, 2004
Williamsburg Art Nexus Webpage - LEMUR at New Directions Music Festival
LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, Singapore
October 7 - 9, 2004
LASALLE-SIA Website - LEMUR at Electrofringe
Newcastle, Australia
September 30 - October 4, 2004
Electrofringe Website - Third Annual ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show
The Mink Building
126th Street & Amsterdam Avenue, New York
September 17, 18, & 19, 2004
ArtBots Website
- July 27, 2006, VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
Program notes from RoboRecital (see the previous page for more information):
The history of so-called mechanical music is a long and colorful one. The existence of self-powered water-blown instruments of the Roman and Arab worlds likely pre-dated the birth of Christ, and many great composers have worked extensively with musical automata. Self-playing organs were used by Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, C.P.E. Bach, and Beethoven, among others.
In the twentieth century, composer Conlon Nancarrow turned to the player piano out of frustration with human performers, and he worked with it almost exclusively for the whole of his adult life. Percy Grainger also found the superhuman abilities of mechanical instruments compelling. About his own “free music,” he wrote in 1938 that it “should pass direct from the imagination of the composer to the ear of the listener by way of delicately controlled musical machines. Too long has music been subject to the limitations of the human hand, and subject to the interfering interpretation of a middle-man: the performer. A composer wants to speak to his public direct. Machines (if properly constructed and properly written for) are capable of niceties of emotional expression impossible to a human performer.”
Automation of acoustic instruments allows a composer to transcend limitations of performer ability and offers new sound possibilities that could not be reproduced by a live performer. While other techniques of computer music may seem more practical, the automated instrument approach retains the richness of the source acoustic instrument and offers the visual interest of live instrumental performance.
My music for this these instruments takes advantage of the superhuman abilities of these robots, exploring musical possibilities unachievable by a human musician. My piece “Tides Times Two for Player Piano” was composed first as “Tides” for human pianist, while “Two Studies for Player Piano” and “Study for Player Piano” were composed specifically for player piano. My piece “Three Studies for Automated Organ” was written for Paul Hall’s organ, and “Four Studies for GuitarBot” was composed for GuitarBot. My interest in temporal canons in the works of Conlon Nancarrow led to explorations of similar possibilities in my composition, “Study for GuitarBot, Disklavier, Automated Organ, and modBots.”
Mozart was commissioned in 1790 by the eccentric Count Deym von Stritetz to write funeral music for his “Laudon’s Mausoleum,” a monument featuring a mechanical organ. He later wrote two more pieces for musical automata in Count Deym’s collection. The first of these pieces, his F minor fantasia, ‘Organ Piece for a Clock,’ will be featured on tonight’s concert. “Clock” refers not to a timepiece, but to the mechanisms used to automate the organ. Mozart’s Fantasia in F minor was written for a small self-playing organ. The original instrument’s lowest pipe was pitched an octave below middle C, while the low register of the organs he was known to have played exceeded this range by three octaves. Jack Jones, in his 1973 dissertation, “Mozart’s Compositions for the Mechanical Clock-Organ,” writes that “Mozart detested the light high-pitched sounds” of the original mechanical organ, and had this mechanical organ been built with a selection of stops similar to the organs Mozart played, “he would have utilized the full resources of the organ.” My transcription includes every note of Mozart’s original music, unlike the many practical editions for human performer, and utilizes the full resources of this organ.
J.S. Bach’s “Die Kunst der Fuge,” in four voices for unspecified instrumentation, is a perfect match for GuitarBot. Contrapuncti II and III are performed.
Four robots are featured: an automated pipe organ; GuitarBot, a self-playing guitar; ModBots, a collection of robotic percussion instruments; and a Yamaha Disklavier, a modern player piano.
Paul Hall’s organ, built by the Holtkamp Organ Company, has fifty-seven ranks. Although it is an acoustic instrument, every function available to an organist at the console can be controlled by computer.
GuitarBot and ModBots were created by members of LEMUR, a group that develops robotic musical instruments. GuitarBot was created in 2002 by Eric Singer, Kevin Larke, and David Bianciardi. It is a MIDI-controllable guitar-like instrument. Picking, damping, and pitch seeking are controlled by computer. ModBots, created by Bil Bowen, are modular devices that can be affixed to any structure. They allow a composer musical control of specially designed instruments or structural surfaces in a pre-existing space.
The Disklavier, a MIDI-controllable player piano, is built by the Yamaha Corporation. It is valued for its ability to record and reproduce a live pianist’s performance, but its ability to exceed the capabilities of a human performer have made it compelling to composers.
Special thanks to Christopher Rouse, Mari Kimura, Eric Singer, Bil Bowen, Derek Muro, and Chelsea Chen.
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