ICMC/25/d4/1120 Concert n13/08 Camouflage
Camouflage
- 21:46 extremely #Cool - very rhythmic, reminds me of some of Person/Steve Reich's #Piano pieces
- rich, washy
- delay
- the pianist has one ear on, one ear off
#Description
- #Short
- Piano with live electronics conceals, erases and re-paints its own material; as timbres disappear into processed shadows, the work asks how performers mask emotion in a technological veil.
- #Long
- Camouflage is a work for piano and live electronics. All of the electronics are created from sounds sampled and controlled in real-time by the piano and act as an extension of the instrument, creating a hybrid electro-acoustic entity. In the first section of the work, the computer responds to the piano attacks with rhythmic patterns built from processed versions of the chord that triggered the pattern. This gives the music a regular pulsing rhythm without resorting to a fixed track and allowing the performer control over the musical expression and flow. As the piece progresses, an underlying harmonic progression hinted at from the beginning, gradually becomes more prominent, enhanced by sustaining electronics, creating blurry impressionistic washes of color. As the piano moves increasingly towards an ecstatic outburst of Romanticism the electronics respond by becoming increasingly noisy and aggressive, eventually departing from the performer’s direct control, and attempting to suppress and hide the emotions displayed by the human performer.
#Composer
Dan VanHassell
- #Pic
- #Bio
- Electric guitarist and composer Dan VanHassel was a founding member and artistic director of San Francisco new music ensemble Wild Rumpus through 2016, which commissioned over 30 new works. As a guitarist he has appeared as a soloist with the UC Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble, the UC Berkeley Symphony, and as a featured performer with the Eco Ensemble, Original Gravity Concert Series, and the Callithumpian Ensemble. As a composer, his works have been performed by the Talea Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Transient Canvas, Now Hear Ensemble, Empyrean Ensemble, Ignition Duo, Ensemble Pamplemousse and has been featured at the MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Bowling Green New Music Festival, UC Davis Music and Words Festival, Wellesley Composers Conference, June in Buffalo, Music11 Festival, ICMC, and the SEAMUS National Conference. His work has been recognized by grants from the Boston Foundation, Chamber Music America, the Barlow Endowment, the Johnstone Fund, and New Music USA. Dan is an assistant professor of composition and teaches electronic music at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
About
- Pianist and composer, and co-founder of SPLICE Music.
- #Bio/Short
- Co-founded SPLICE Institute
- #Bio/Long
- Keith Kirchoff – Described as a “virtuosic tour de force” whose playing is “energetic, precise, (and) sensitive,” Keith Kirchoff is a pianist, composer, conductor, concert curator, and teacher. A strong advocate for living composers, Kirchoff is committed to fostering new audiences for contemporary music and giving a voice to emerging composers. Kirchoff is the co-founder and President of SPLICE Music: one of the United States’ largest programs dedicated to the performance, creation, and development of music for performers and electronics. As a part of SPLICE, he serves as Director of Performance Studies for SPLICE Institute (a weeklong summer program held at Western Michigan University), Director of SPLICE Festival (an annual conference held in collaboration with different universities), and the pianist of SPLICE Ensemble. As a pianist, Kirchoff has played throughout the United States as well as major cities throughout Italy, New Zealand, Australia, England, Canada, Belgium, Mexico, China, and The Netherlands. He has been a featured soloist in many music festivals including the Festival de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, Festival Internacional de Müsica Contemporánea, the Society for Electro- Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), the Oregon Festival of American Music, and the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). In addition to the SPLICE Ensemble, he is the pianist in the Boston-based Hinge Quartet, and as a soloist and ensemble musician, has commissioned several dozen composers and premiered hundreds of new works, including the Boston premiere of Charles Ives’ Emerson Concerto.
