Performances in January - Gent, Los Angeles

I'm having 2 works performed in January by friends overseas.  The first one, already past, was a performance of my "Another Noisy Lullaby" by Decibel at the Logos Foundation in Gent, Belgium, on January 17.  Many thanks to Cat Hope and all the Logos Crew for including me in the program!

The second one, upcoming, on January 29, is a performance of my electronic piece "for Anne, who broke my heart" from 1974 as part of the Welcome Inn Time Machine performances.  Here's a description of the whole event:

The Society for the Activation of Social Space Through Art and Sound (SASSAS) transforms Eagle Rock’s Welcome Inn into a venue for live performances creating a free, six hour event featuring experimental music originating in Southern California, 1949 - 1977.  Micro concerts take place in individual rooms allowing key moments in sound and music history to be experienced simultaneously and sequentially in a single location.  (One of the featured events is a performance/re-creation of Arnold Schoenberg's 1949 "Draft of a String Quartet.")

The event I'm part of celebrates the Theater Vanguard's "Currents" series, which was curated by Barry Schrader from 1973-78.  Barry has put together a selection of pieces from that series and it will play as a 2 hour repeating program throughout the day.  Thanks, Barry, for including my work!

So if you're in Los Angeles this Sunday, you could do worse than to drop into the Welcome Inn at Eagle Rock.  If I were in LA on Sunday, that's where I would be!

Here's some links:

http://www.logosfoundation.org/concerts/concerts2012.html

http://www.sassas.org/welcomeinn/ (click on "Currents Series" for more information.)

Downloads from Pogus now available

I've been involved with Al Margolis, of Pogus Records, for many years now. He brought out my Harmonic Colour Fields CD a number of years ago, and since then I've been involved in various aspects of album production with him.  I recently received an email from him letting me know that my CD, and others I'd been involved with, were now available for purchase via download from Ganxy.  Here are the links:

Warren Burt: Harmonic Colour Fields: https://ganxy.com/i/22942

(A set of five very slowly moving pieces from the 90s exploring different tuning systems)

Felix Werder: The Tempest: https://ganxy.com/i/22546

(A collection of Felix's electronic music - three pieces from the 70s, and his only computer piece, from the early 90s.)

KIVA: https://ganxy.com/i/22512

(KIVA was the improvisation group of Keith Humble, Jean-Charles Francois, and John Silber - this 2 cd set is a selection from a number of their sessions from the late 80s and early 90s.

Kenneth Gaburo: Maledetto: http://www.pogus.com/g47.html

(Maledetto is Gaburo's masterful, fun, and slightly smutty celebration of the speaking voice - exploring innumberable facets of the word "screw" it's a masterpiece of extended vocal writing and sound poetry.)

So if you've been wondering where you can buy any of the above, now you know!

Virtual Versions of the Fokker Organ Pieces, at last

It took quite a while to get around to doing this, but I've finally made recordings of my interactive pieces for the Fokker Microtonal Organ that I'm satisfied with.  These weren't using the actual organ, but a virtual one - a patch, made by Ere Lievonen, for the Hauptwerk Virtual Organ which emulates the 31 tone tuning and registration of the actual organ.  These pieces are interactive improvisations with programs I set up in ArtWonk (with some assistance from Andrew Culver and John Cage's IC program), in which I hear what I'm playing and respond to it.  In most of the movements, the main control I have is over tempo and range (high and low notes) of the individual voices - I'm sculpting time and register of 31-tone organ music in real time.  Here are the recordings of the individual movements.  

Warren Burt: Three Movements for Fokker Organ - 1: Time Lock Puzzles in the Random Oracle Model

Warren Burt: Three Movements for Fokker Organ - 2: Guaranteed Repetition Free, or Double Your Drachmas Back

Warren Burt: Three Movements for Fokker Organ - 3: Being Generous With Those Genera

Warren Burt: Fokker Organ Wren

Each movement lasts about 3 and 1/2 minutes.  If you want to download them, for each movement you can click 1: HERE, 2: HERE, 3: HERE, and for the Fokker Organ Wren, HERE.  Enjoy!

A Thought for the New Year

No matter what they say about "nothing new under the sun,"

it is always possible to invent something original.

George Gershwin, 1930

Happy 2012 to all!

Performance in Amsterdam in Daylesford, 13 November 2011

Tonight I performed the Fokker Microtonal Organ in the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam. The Fokker Organ is a rather remarkable instrument, tuned in 31-tone equal temperament, built by Adriaan Fokker in Amsterdam in 1950. (More info: www.huygens-fokker.org/instruments/fokkerorgan.html)  I did this from my desk in Daylesford.  Here's a picture of me performing, taken by Catherine.  In the small Skype window on the big computer is Ere Lievonen, who was performing with me, on the organ keyboard in Amsterdam.

Here's a photo, taken by Sander Germanus, who commissioned the pieces and organized the event.  Ere Lievonen is at the organ console, and I'm on the video screen to the right of the organ.

 And here is a video, also taken by Sander, of the performance of most of the 3rd movement of "Three Movements for Fokker Organ (2011)" by me.  The 3rd movement is called "Being Generous with Those Genera," which refers to particular chords available in the 31-note scale.  More info on that in the program notes below.  In this video, Ere sits at the organ console to change registration, and I play the organ via computer (using ArtWonk) from Daylesford.

 UPDATE 5 December 2011:

We also performed Wim De Ruiter's duet "Together" for Max patch and live 31 tone organ.  Ere played the live part on the keyboard, and I sent midi to the organ from Daylesford.  We heard each other with a 1 second delay, however, since we were triggering gestures, and not matching specific note rhythms, that wasn't a problem.  "Together" is a fun piece where the two players trigger or play a restricted set of gestures, assembling a structure from the pre-composed materials in real time.  It's a lot of fun to play - and I'd like to do more of this.  Sander Germanus made a video of the last minute of Ere and me performing.  Here it is:

Here's the program of the concert from the www.huygens-fokker.org website.  A more complete audio recording of the concert is coming soon.  This was a very exciting, if a bit hair-raising, way to perform.  There were a number of hours-long rehearsals where all we did was sort out technical problems, which, of course, manifested themselves right up until the last minute.  Not to mention the difficulties of performing with someone half a world away over a tiny video window.  However, now that we've ironed out the difficulties, I'm hoping to do a lot more of this.