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 supported by Yamaha
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 …”Scene from “XXIV. Disparation du palais…”
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.
A concert project for Ars Electronica 2017 developed in collaboration with Markus Poschner, Norbert Trawöger, Martin Honzik, Karl Schmiedinger, …
Performed by Bruckner Orchestra (AT)/ Markus Poschner (DE)
Soloists: Nguyên Lê (FR/VN), Hugo Siegmeth (DE), Harald Scharf (DE),
Bastian Jütte (DE), Markus Poschner (DE), Rupert Huber (AT),
Roberto Paci Dalò (IT), Stefano Spada (IT)
Visualization by Cori Ol’an (AT)
Here are some excerpts from the live recording of the concert-performance on 10.9.2017 at Postcity/Trainhall.
the realtime visuals where shown on a 5-screen-wide panorama projection. so please try to look at the video in hd and with a big screen…
At the center of the Big Concert Night in POSTCITY are the two middle movements of Anton Bruckner’s 8th Symphony, the crux on which the entire performance hinges. This is right and wrong at the same time! Bruckner’s music forms the foundation, the walls and perhaps the heavens too, in which audience members, situated in the middle of the Gleishalle, are free to move about.
The listeners are in the center, in the arena, anked on one side by Bruckner Orchestra Linz and on the other by a band of musicians including world-class guitarist Nguyên Lê, Hugo Siegmeth (reeds), Harald Scharf (bass) and Bastian Jütte (drums). A symphonic space is to be con gured about the audience, who will be able to shift locations, stay put and be receptive to sound arriving from all directions.
The interior of Bruckner’s symphony will be opened up, commented on, re ected upon and thus made immediately accessible by those present. In this concert event, form and content are being renegoti- ated. This is the very nature of the Ars Electronica Festival, which, perennially on the leading edge, showcases the progress of visionary technologies, hosts a discussion, and considers them in a social context—the 2017 festival theme is Artificial Intelligence—The Other I. This is likewise the nature of this unique situation for auditory and visual experience in the Gleishalle, a railroad loading dock in a former postal service logistics facility, and, above all, of the setting and the dramaturgy that Markus Poschner and his musicians have come up with.
Poschner will lead his orchestra, but also segue to the band and have recourse to his piano’s keys to improvise beyond, on and with Bruckner’s sounds. But this is far more than commuting back and forth; these tonal strands are willingly drawn out of the symphony and keyed up in multiple perspectives. This is ultimately an endeavor at sensory experience in a space that differs from a conventional concert hall. Another space for another experiencing ego to thereby play an interesting variation on the festival theme.
