Program:
Karlheinz Stockhausen – Mikrophonie I
Louis Pino – Three Roses
Karlheinz Stockhausen – Mikrophonie I (1964)
Performed by members of the TaPIR lab:
Tyler Cunningham
Bevis Ng
Aiyun Huang
Hoi Tong Keung
Timothy Roth
Matti Pulkki
The Technology and Performance Integration Research (TaPIR) lab is led by Aiyun Huang at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto with the support of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Program. The research program looks at how to engage with music technology for sustainability with the performer’s perspective. Regular activities at TaPIR include workshops, commissioning projects, research-creation opportunities, and concerts. Project collaborators include Levy Lorenzo, Mari Kimura, Christopher Dobrian, Miller Puckette, Sabrina Schroeder. Please visit us at https://tapirlab.music.utoronto.ca/ for more information.
Funding acknowledgement:
This project is made possible with the support of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Program.
Program notes:
In the early 1960s, Karlheinz Stockhausen began to explore the idea of using the microphone as a musical instrument by altering its position in order to manipulate amplified sounds. This idea, combined with many experiments on the tam-tam hung in the composer’s garden, culminated in the 1964 composition Mikrophonie I for six players, tam-tam and electronics.The work organizes players into two groups of three, wherein each of the three players shares a role in shaping the resulting sounds.Two players produce various sounds on the surface of each side of the tam-tam; two additional players use microphones to pick up sounds while manipulating the microphones; and two players located in the center of the hall control the volume and frequency of the sounds as they are distributed to four loudspeakers. This process was described by Stockhausen as “three mutually dependent, mutually interacting and simultaneously autonomous processes of sound-structuring”. This performance by the TaPIR lab is part of an ongoing research project documenting the reconstruction process for works with obsolete electronics.
Louis Pino – Three Roses
Performed by Jasmine Tsui, Tim Roth, Sam Kerr and Brayden Krueger
Three Roses is a quartet for percussion, incorporating 2 technological devices to give the performers control over lighting and sound design. First is the MUGIC, a gestural sensor developed by violinist Mari Kimura, which you can see on each of the players’ hands. Second is the Arduino which controls the lights, and through the software Max MSP can respond to the gestures of the performers captured by the MUGIC. This piece was commissioned by Aiyun Huang for the TaPIR lab in the early stages of COVID, and as such has gone through multiple iterations from live concert performance, to remote collaboration, and eventually settled as an in person recording project.
Three Roses is split up into three movements, each representing a different breed of rose, and each representing a different stage of my grandmother’s garden. Moonshadow, a wide blooming soft purple flower, is a soloistic meandering walk through a fading garden, accompanied by each of the three other performers in the form of individual memories, underlying and influencing the wanderer. Knock Out, a bush of small and bright red roses, is a short and energetic dance between the four players, children running in open space. Heirloom, a descriptor given to plants which have not undergone selective breeding or genetic modification in recent centuries. As a young child, this garden seemed absolutely massive and could fully enshroud you from the rest of the world. Being surrounded by this cave of vines and flowers is one of my earliest fragments of a memory.
Thanks to Jasmine Tsui, Tim Roth, Sam Kerr and Brayden Krueger for performing the piece, and Jasmine for making the gloves for the MUGICs. Thank you to Fish Ho for filming. And thank you to Aiyun Huang for commissioning this piece with support from TaPIR Lab and SSHRC Fund for Innovation.
Composer bio:
Louis Pino is a percussionist and electronicist whose work spans a breadth of musical genres and other media, including improvisation, composed theater, pop, and electroacoustic music. As a soloist, Pino prefers to work on music incorporating theatrical elements and the use of technology, and has performed solo recitals of entirely theatrical music, as well as those with entirely electroacoustic music. Pino’s most recent creative projects have been writing music for his pop band, and the curation and production of two back to back concerts featuring his two recently formed chamber ensembles, Tilikum Percussion Trio, and Joyce To/Louis Pino, focusing on contemporary concert music and improvised experimental music respectively. Also on this bill was his solo performance of Roger Reynolds’s new 30 minue theatrical percussion solo Here and There. His latest technological ventures have been the composition of a live generative video and percussion solo with the use of the prototype MUGIC motion sensor at Future Music Lab under Mari Kimura, as well as incorporating the sensor into live sound and lighting design for an abridged production of The Tempest. Pino is also an active chamber musician and has performed with the Bob Becker Ensemble, Din of Shadows experimental music-theatre company, and regularly performs with TorQ Percussion Quartet. As an orchestral player, Pino was recently awarded the National Youth Orchestra of Canada’s Award of Excellence and performs regularly with the Kingston and Thunder Bay Symphonies. When not working on music, Pino is probably at home in Toronto brushing his cat Tilly. Pino holds a BMus from Oberlin Conservatory where he studied percussion with Michael Rosen and Technology in Music and Related Arts with Aurie Hsu and Joo Won Park, along with a MMus in percussion from the University of Toronto under Aiyun Huang, Beverly Johnston, John Rudolph, and Charles Settle.