The Mishima-Suite is a selection of 7 pieces from the music Philip Glass wrote in 1985 for the Paul Schrader movie about the live and death of Yukio Mishima.
Maki Namekawa commissioned Michael Riesman for the piano arrangement and recorded and premiered the whole set in 2018. https://www.makinamekawa.com/mishima/
Mishima-Suite: Mishima / Opening November 25: Morning Temple Of The Golden Pavilion November 25: Ichigaya Award Montage Runaway Horse Mishima / Closing
The realtime visualisation has been created for the performance of the Mishima-Suite by Maki Namekawa at the Ars Electronica Home Delivery Concert on Aug 23rd, 2020.
Visualisation with the music from the CD:
Video from the Ars Electronica Home Delivery Concert on Aug 23rd, 2020. (Mishima starts at 25.15 min)
Commissioned by WDR for their program „Augen auf! Beethoven“ in the frame of Beethoven Jahr 2020: (Editor: Tuula Simon)
I had the great pleasure to be invited as one of 6 visual artists to participate in this program.
WDR Sinfonieorchester, conducted by Günter Wand
On the real-time visualization of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture
The aim is to express the ambivalence, disruption and inner restlessness of Collins Coriolanus, which Beethoven very significantly expressed in his overture. But it is also about Shakespeare’s strong motif of Coriolanus’ fateful entanglement and his struggle for independence and identity. Hence the doubling or mirroring of the graphics, whose elements then move in very different and contradictory ways. These differences come purely from the sonic difference between the left and right channels of the stereo recording. In general, all movements are directly and exclusively triggered and determined by the sound of the music.
The graphics refer to three characters of the story:
Coriolanus (the black multi-segment vector),
the Volsker (the blue and orange polygons)
and the women and the family (the fine curved lines).
They act together in a kind of ballet in which the music itself takes over the choreography.
On May 1st, 2020 Ars Electronica, in response to the Corona lock-downs, started its Home-Delivery Program with the first of a long series of concerts performed by the piano-duo Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies and accompanied by realtime visualisations from Cori O‘Lan.
The concerts took place in the „piano-room“ of the AIxMusic exhibition of the Ars Electroncia Center which is equipped with an exquisite Bösendorfer grand piano and a two screen panorama projection. All the concerts were streamed live on youtube and facebook. Between the pieces Maki and Dennis had live conversations with friends and colleagues (like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Charles Amirkhanian, Laurie Anderson … ) and also the audience could ask questions and send comments.
Home Delivery Concert #1 – May 1st, 2020
Maurice Ravel
“Ma Mere L’Oye” (piano four-hands)
Ludwig van Beethoven
from Fidelio: „O namenlose Freude“ (arranged for piano four-hands by Alexander von Zemlinsky)
Home Delivery Concert #2 – May 8th, 2020
Philip Glass
Etude for Piano #4, #9, performed by Dennis Russel Davies
Etude for Piano #11, #12, performed by Maki Namekawa
Elergy for the Present, performed by Dennis Russel Davies
Stokes, (arranged for piano four-hands by Dennis Russel Davies and Maki Namekawa)
Home Delivery Concert #3 – May 15th, 2020
Igor Stravinsky
„L’Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird) – Suite“ (arranged for piano four hands by Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa)
Dmitri Shostakovich
“Walz” (piano four-hands)
“Polka” (piano four-hands)
Home Delivery Concert #4 – May 22nd, 2020
Steve Reich
Piano Phase
J.S. Bach
Chorale Prelude – Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106
Chorale Prelude – Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV 525
arranged for piano four-hands by György Kurtag
Home Delivery Concert #5 – May 29th, 2020
Ludwig van Beethoven
3 Marches for piano four-hands op. 45
Arvo Pärt
Hymn to a Great City, for two pianos
Pari Intervalo, for piano four-hands
J.S. Bach
Chorale Prelude – O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig, BWV 656
arranged for piano four-hands by György Kurtag
Home Delivery Concert #6 – June 5th, 2020
Philip Glass
Etude for Piano #5, #10 performed by Dennis Russell Davies
Etude for Piano #16, #20 performed by Maki Namekawa
Orphée (Interlude), for piano four-hands
Voyage (Interlude), four piano four-hands
Home Delivery Concert #7 – June 12th, 2020
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
aus „Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)“, arranged for piano four-hands by Alexander von Zemlinsky
Act II Finale, „Bald prangt den Morgen zu verkünden“
Act II Aria, „Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen“
Act II Aria, „In diesen heil’gen Hallen kennt man die Rache nicht“
Act II Adagio „Marsch“
Home Delivery Concert #8 – June 19th, 2020
John Cage
The Seasons
Prelude I, Winter
Prelude II, Spring
performed by Dennis Russell Davies
Suite for Toy Piano
performed by Maki Namekawa
Experiences I (for two pianos)
Laurie Anderson
Song for Bob
performed by Dennis Russell Davies
Elliot Goldenthal
Gigue Diabolique
performed by Maki Namekawa
Home Delivery Concert #9 – June 26th, 2020
Kurt Schwertsik
„6 Macbeth Pieces for Piano four-hands“ (20.10 min) Realtime Visualisation: Gregor Woschitz
Joep Beving
Midwayer
Hanging D
Ludwig van Beethoven
from Fidelio: „Euch werde Lohn in besseren Tagen“arranged for piano four-hands by Alexander von Zemlinsky
Home Delivery Concert #10 – July 14th, 2020
Igor Stravinsky
„L’Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird)“
Arrangement for piano four hands: Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa, (50.00 min)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
aus „Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)“, arranged for piano four-hands by Alexander von Zemlinsky
Pictures at an Exhibition, Modest Mussorgsy (1874), Orchestration Maurice Ravel (1922)
Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca, Bohuslav Martinů (1955)
Orchestra: Filharmonie Brno
Conductor: Dennis Russel Davies
Realtime Visualisation: Cori O’Lan
recorded live on 12.3.2020 at Besední dům, the wonderful concert hall of the Filharmonie Brno. Projection, live cameras, sound engineering adn streaming: Rosound
Originally the concert was scheduled for the 12. and 13. 3. in the Janáček-Theater but because of the Corona-Crisis the concert had to be canceled and instead we made a live streaming directly from the Besední dům.
The full concert (including Mathis der Maler by Hindemith) is rescheduled for Aug. 17th at the open air stage of the Spilberk Castle Brno.
short preview of the visualisations prepared for the concert in Brno:
4. Bydlow
5. Ballet of Unhatched Chicks
9. Baba Yaga
10. The Bogatyr Gates
Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca, Bohuslav Martinů
Piano Sonate, Philip Glass, 2019
Piano: Maki Namekawa
Realtime Visualisation: Cori O’Lan
Piano Sonata by Philip Glass has been commissioned by Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Ars Electronica, Philharmonie de Paris,
Performance at Ars Electronica and Tokyo Midtown Festival supported by Yamaha
Photos from the performance at Tokyo Midtown Festival (Feb 2020)
Photos from the performance at Ars Electronica 2019 (09.09.2019)
about the music:
“The Sonata is colorful, wild, excitingly jumpy…” – with these words Malte Hemmerich begins his review of the premiere of Philip Glass’s latest work at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr on July 4th 2019 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He further continues “… it is a prime example of Philip Glass’s piano music with its opposing rhythms, and there are also many other familiar elements from the composer’s etudes and individual works. In such a wild kaleidoscope, however, they appear here for the first time.
It is Glass’s most demanding piano work to date; the rapid succession of virtuoso octave jumps are close to the limit of playability. Namekawa breathes this music, the piece is an example of how an incomparable unity can arise from the close collaboration between composer and interpreter.”
L’Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird), Igor Stravinsky
Arrangement for piano four hands: Dennis Russell Davies
Piano: Maki Namekawa & Dennis Russell Davies
Realtime Visualisation: Cori O’Lan
performed at Ars Electronica 2019
Video from the Concert at Ars Electronica Postcity:
The full visualisation with the music from the CD-recording of Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa:
The screen at the performance was approx. 20 x 4 m big with 3 HD laser projectors (5760×1200). So the video here is comparatively very small. Please watch it in full screen mode with highest possible resolution. (The first 2 minutes of the video are very dark so you might want to jump a bit forward)
about the music:
In 1909, when Igor Stravinsky began to work on the music for the ballet The Firebird, which Sergei Diaghilev had commissioned for his Ballets Russes, he was still a young and little-known composer. The premiere of The Firebird in Paris in 1910, which was equally celebrated by audiences and critics, suddenly made the 27-year-old Igor Stravinsky internationally famous.
With his complex rhythms and extraordinary tonal effects of the great orchestra, Stravinsky created a surprising and gripping characterization of the mystical story of Ivan Zarevich, who defeats the evil sorcerer Kaschej and his demons with the help of the firebird.
Dennis Russell Davies built his arrangement for piano four-hands on Stravinsky’s piano score and it is amazing how varied and sensitive he succeeds in transferring the effect of the overwhelming, colorful richness of the orchestral sounds into the fragility of the piano sound. Reduced to the elementary sound, it opens up a persuasive path to the essence of Stravinsky’s great composition.
about the visuals:
As always in my collaborations with Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa, the visualizations are real-time graphics, i.e. there are no prepared videos or image sequences that are synchronized to the music. It is only the sound of the piano directly picked up over two microphones, which is analyzed by computer and thus provides the parameters with which the graphics are generated, animated and modified – live in the moment of the performance.
The very dance-like animations of the graphic elements designed to correspond to The Firebird ballet and its characters are derived exclusively from the sound spectrum and dynamics of the music, without motion tracking or keyframe animation. The parameters derived from the music are directly assigned to various parameters of physics-based simulation models, particle systems as well as to the geometries, colors and lights, etc.
Photos from the performance at Ars Electronica Festival (09.09.2019)
Scene from “IX. Brusque apparition d’Ivan Tsarévitch”
Scene from “IX. Brusque apparition d’Ivan Tsarévitch”
Scene from “IX. Brusque apparition d’Ivan Tsarévitch”
Scene from “X. Khorovode (Ronde) des princesses”
Scene from “XI. Lever du jour”
Scene from “XIII. Carillon Féerique, apparition des monstres-gardiens …”
The Berlioz Project has been created for Ars Electronica‘s Big Concert Night, Sep. 2018, in collaboration with Bruckner Orchestra Linz, Markus Poschner, Norbert Trawöger, Silke Grabinger, Martin Honzik, Karl Schmidinger, Joshi Viteka, Hannes Franks, Johannes Braumann, Peter Freudling.
A central element of the special stage setting was the heavy duty industrial robot KUKA-KR600 which weighs more than 2,5 tons and is 3,3 m high when fully stretched.
The robot was placed in the middle of the stage, surrounded by the orchestra and the motors of its 6 axis were directly controlled by the music of the orchestra – the same data which were used for the digital realtime visualisation.
The realtime visuals were presented on 6 large screens, surrounding the orchestra and the robot.
For the 3rd movement of Symphonie Fantastique we developed a special system where the music was controlling the movements of the robot and the robot sent his position-data to move and synchronize 4 moving-head lights and also to control the position of the realtime-visuals on the screens.
Realtime Visualisation for the 3rd Movement. The position of this orange square was directly controlled by the position-data coming from the robot. All other modifications were controlled by the music-signal from the orchestra.
Dancers: SILK Fluegge with Silke Grabinger, Gergely Dudás, Elias Choi Buttinger
Tour en l´air (spinning dresses) by Ursula Neugebauer,
Roboter choreography and programming: Johannes Braumann, Peter Freudling, Silke Grabinger, Cori O‘lan
Visualization and Robotchoreography for 3rd movement by Cori O’lan
Robot: KUKA KR600 industrial robot / KUKA GmbH
Here are some excerpts from the live concert in the Postcity/Gleishalle of Ars Electronica 2018.
Realtime visualisations were shown on 6 large screens.
In the part with the dancers the robot was pre-programmed according to the choreography of Silke Grabinger (Robot-programming was done bei Johannes Braumann and Peter Freudling)
In the 3rd movement and in the special percussion intermezzo the robot was directly controlled by the music of the orchestra. The robot was continuously sending data about his position back to the computer to control the movements of the moving-head-lights and also to the graphic-computer to control and synchronize the position of the visuals on the screen. —> here is more about this Robo-Solo.
Realtime visualisation for the 1st movement of Symphonie Fantastique:
Realtime visualisation for the 2nd movement of Symphonie Fantastique:
Music: Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Maurice Ravel
Pianos: Maki Namekawa & Dennis Russell Davies
Visualisation: Cori O’lan
24th March, 2018 – Emirates Palace Auditorium.
Photos: Filharmonie Brno, Vojtěch Kába,
