Cal Performances presents an open rehearsal for The Keyboard Reimagined, featuring Sō Percussion
Alfred Hertz Memorial Concert Hall
U.C. Berkeley, Bancroft Way at College Ave, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
3:00 PM, Sunday, April 7, 2019

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2019 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2019 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

• 3pm: Gather for pre-performance snacks in lobby
• 3:15pm: Enjoy the opportunity to ask questions of the members of So Percussion
• 3:30pm: Open Rehearsal of Suzanne Farrin: a diamond in the square
• 4pm: Open Rehearsal of selections from Dan Trueman's Nostalgic Synchronic (for prepared digital piano) ? featuring Adam Sliwinski?
• 4:45pm: End of event

[3:15 PM Alexis invites us to join the band in the performance hall]

[3:18 PM; Welcome by Sabrina Klein; Q&A with the band]

1. [3:41 PM] Donnacha Dennehy (b. 1970): Broken Unison, fragment from 1st Movement
2. [3:45 PM] Donnacha Dennehy (b. 1970): Broken Unison, fragment from 3rd Movement
   
   [3:49 PM; Jason talks about the Caroline Shaw piece]
3. [3:49 PM] Caroline Shaw (b. 1982): Taxidermy (2012), rehearsal fragment
   
   [3:52 PM; Jason talks about the Suzanne Farrin piece]
4. [3:55 PM] Suzanne Farrin (b. 1976): a diamond in the square, rehearsal fragment
   
   [4:02 PM; Adam moves to the bitclavier, talks about the instrument and the Dan Trueman work]
5. [4:06 PM] Dan Trueman (b. 1968): Undertow, an excerpt from Nostalgic Synchronic (for prepared digital piano)
   [4:10 PM; thanks, we're all done!]

Sō Percussion

• Eric Cha-Beach: percussion;
• Josh Quillen: percussion;
• Adam Sliwinski: percussion, bitKlavier;
• Jason Treuting: percussion.

While it was shorter than I expected, I'm really glad that I attended today's talk – it was really interesting to hear the performers talk about their motivations and expectations, and also to hear them working with one another to iron out small kinks before the performance scheduled for tonight.

According to the band, the Donnacha Dennehy piece – performed mostly on mallet instruments, was written as a sort of commentary or response to Steve Reich's Mallet Quartet of 2009. As an aside, I was present to hear the US premiere of that work, with Sō Percussion (and Steve Reich!) in Dinkelspiel Auditorium at Stanford. Someday I'll get an event page posted for that!

Performed mostly on ceramic pots, I think the Caroline Shaw piece was a repeat. Another flaw in my notes is that I can't look that up very easily! Some day I'll make time to go back and fill in all the missing programs…

Today's excerpt from Suzanne Farrin's work was the first one that truly captured the program title, The Keyboard Reimagined, as it involved all four members of the quartet playing the piano together, almost exclusively in various non-traditional ways: rapping and tapping on the case, bowing on the strings, and so on. It reminded me very much of part of a show that I saw at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre a long time ago, probably Other Minds Festival 8, from 3/2/02. Yet another show without an event page for now.

And the final rehearsal piece, Undertow, certainly took the program title to heart, as it featured Adam playing a bitKlavier, programmed to produce dynamic effects impossible to realize in any traditional acoustic keyboard. To wit: the programming captured the performance dynamics (from key-down to key-up) as the keyboard was played, then played notes with a dynamic volume envelope that took the initial event (key-down to key-up) as an “input tone”, reversed it, then tacked on the reversal at double duration. Something like adding a bizarre sort of echo or reverb. With the initial tone selection set to something like an electric piano, the effect was woozily reminiscent of a Fender-Rhodes. Interesting, in a curious way, but overall, Undertow (or the fragment I heard) seemed like a bit of musical exploration (hmmn, I wonder what this will sound like…) rather than a music statement.

All too soon, the guys announced that they were done – everything they needed to cover had been reviewed – and with that, the program ended. A little short, but hey, hard to complain when it was free!

Program Notes or program notes

Rebecca Wishnia posted a review of the evening show.

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2019 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2019 event list! ☸ On to the next event!