Gig Alert: Morton Subotnick & Lars Graugaard Perform Tonight, Monday 2/28

The Electronic Music Foundation, in collaboration with NYU Interactive Arts, is presenting the work of two pioneering electronic music artists tonight, Monday, February 28, 8 PM at the Frederick Lowe Theater, 35 West 4th Street. Admission is free.

NYC electronic music icon performs tonight at downtown's Frederck Lowe Theater.

The featured music will be by composer/flautist Lars Graugaard, and groundbreaking composer/computer music developer Morton Subotnick, widely regarded as one of the fathers of modern synthesis.

Tonight’s program:
Bloom (world premier), for flute/alto flute, clarinet and piano, by Lars Graugaard

Palpitations, for piano and interactive computer, by Lars Graugaard

A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur with The Other Piano: Revisited, For laptop, keyboard and Buchla 200e synthesizer by Morton Subotnick

Bloom, a world premier, will be performed by Esther Lamneck, Keith Underwood and Hsiang John Tu. An important feature of the compositional process was the use of the emoter-composer compositional tool. This tool is based on empirical research into emotion-related score and performance features, conducted since the 1930s, and significantly pervaded the creative stance towards the work. A framework for important score features that characterize commonly recognized emotions in music are provided by this tool. It allowed for specific moods, and transitions between moods, to be observed. Not being a part of the compositional material, it nevertheless provided delimitations and suggestions for compositional-technical decisions, enhancing the musical focus of the work in combination with the established compositional procedures for material integrity.

Palpitations will be premiered by Manuel Laufer. The computer establishes its interplay with the soloist mainly through body movements. The well-known (in)voluntary torso movements are used in a deliberate manner to animate the sonic response, since it is known that such movements have a significant impact on the audience’s perception of a musical performance. The writing for the piano is quite attentive to the instrument’s nature and history, using constant movements in steps, ordered melodic cells and quasi-tonal chordal arpeggios. These procedures are rarely intertwined, but are employed as sequences of different musical stages. At times the player is requested to repeat a particular fragment, and this is where the body movements are explored by the computer.

A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur with The Other Piano: Revisited will be performed by Kathleen Supove along with Subotnick. It is another in a series of performances where Subotnick revists older works. In A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur with The Other Piano he has deconstructed both works by breaking them up into available material for impromptu reassembly at the concert. New materials and processing of the reassembled fragments are performed on the laptop using Ableton Live and the Buchla 200e. The two devices are inter-connected. Preparation for the performance is a matter of getting used to the process, but each revisit is a unique performance.

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