Zach Herchen

Thanks to everyone who came out last Friday for the No Signal show. We had a great time performing for you, especially improvising music on your haiku. My favorite was the "she hit me" series. A special thanks to Load of Fun for providing such a great venue. We loved the new stage!

And I thought musicians would be replaced by robots.

Concert Details:
No Signal
Friday, December 12th @ 9pm
Load of Fun @ 120 W. North Avenue, Baltimore, MD
$5 door
Performers: Dave Cohen, Emma Stanley, Adam Knauss, Zach Herchen, Domenica Romagni, Ruby Fulton, Britt Olsen-Ecker, and Masako Kunimoto

Program:
Fraises et Crème Fraiche by Rabih Abou-Khalil
Hammerfall by Niels Rønsholdt
Time by Tom Waits
Last Train Home by Pat Metheny
Improvisation
Workers Union by Louis Andriessen

No Signal's next concert is one week away, which means we are pretty busy pulling together the final touches. This performance will mark the start of our third year! In that time we have performed music by Frederic Rzewski, Osvaldo Golijov, Maurice Ravel, Lori Laitman, Evan Chambers, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Nick Drake, Maria Schneider, Horice Silver, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus, Esbjörn Svensson Trio, Chick Corea, Brad Mehldau, Weezer, Bob Dylan, and Bob Marley. We have also premiered five compositions, presented several second performances of new music, and even covered a few tunes from the Muppets, TV shows, and musicals.

Our big piece for this program is Louis Andriessen's Workers Union, performed with voice/megaphone, electric guitar, electric cello, viola with pickup, trumpet, baritone saxophone, keyboard, and percussion. This work is a mix of restraint and liberty. The entire group plays the same rhythms, but the individual players improvise the pitches. The result is a huge range of harmonies and textures that can be harsh at one point and beautiful the next.

The concert will also include the Baltimore premiere of Niels Rønsholdt's Hammerfall for piano, saxophone, and percussion. This piece makes good use of extended technique and unusual percussion instruments such as whips and glass. You can get a good idea of the atmosphere created during performance by reading the text used in Hammerfall:

My name is T, I shape ornaments.
The seconds pass so rapidly.

I know what I'm doing.

Sometimes I make mistakes, I don't wanna make:
I slip, I am not careful,
The things in my hand explode one by one.
I hurt myself, I deserve it.
I hate myself.

I try to forget.

The seconds slow down:
They pound inside my head,
like a swollen heart.

I have to be careful.

In anticipation of the upcoming No Signal show, here's a video of the Muppets!

Just a litle bit of awesome for Friday.

The Metropolitan Opera is presenting "La Damnation de Faust" by Berlioz as an interactive opera. Some very interesting technology will be used to generate effects such as water reflections, moving grass, and flocks of birds that react in real time to the performance. Robert Lepage, who designed the production, first used the technology with Cirque du Soleil.

I first read about the production on Boing Boing here. The Met has info on their website, including a video preview. Also, the New York Times has an article that includes a multimedia slideshow. If you aren't near NYC, you can see a live HD broadcast of the Met in movie theaters on Saturday, November 22nd at 1pm ET.

Barack Obama has posted a photo set of the election night onto Flickr. I always wondered what it looked like behind the scenes...

Throughout his campaign, Barack Obama used the internet to great advantage. Obama's campaign website was hugely influential in his fundraising and volunteer organization. Now, having been elected, he has created change.gov. The internet already has rumors/suggestions/jokes of fireside chats on YouTube.

Things have been pretty busy lately: getting six commissions off the ground, gathering funding for a tour in march, and organizing concerts in November, December, January, February, March, April, and May. Phew! I will be posting details as the dates for events are finalized.

Made In Queens is a documentary about a group of teens from Trinidad (living in Queens) who hook up crazy sound systems to their bikes. You can check out the trailer here. I've gotta get one of these!

This is a hilarious video of musical comedian Victor Borge. The summary of Mozart's career is funny, but I think Borge's best jokes are the small ones that seem to come off the top of his head.

Yesterday I went to an interesting talk about "re-performing" Glenn Gould's 1955 recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. Zenph Studios has developed a very sophisticated method of programming a recorded piano performance into MIDI data, which encodes pitch, intensity, and other control signals. The MIDI can then be played back through a real piano that has motors controlling each key and foot pedals (think high-tech payer piano). Since only the piano is translated into MIDI code, the result is a replication of just the performance, removing anything else from the sound.

Sony got together with the CBC in 2006 to record the "re-performance" of Gould in order to bring the 1955 record into today's modern world of high-fidelity. The result can be heard on Zenph's website. Since the recording only takes up half an SACD, they decided to have two versions from different perspectives. The first is the typical stereo/surround version and the second is a binaural recording from the Glenn Gould's perspective. Designed to be listened to with headphones, this perspective is a really unique chance to hear what the performer hears. There really is nothing else like this... except for the second album they put out with a "re-performance" of Art Tatum live in Los Angelos (1949).

The entire process and idea of a "re-performance" is very interesting. I'm not sure there is much value in attending a concert of this (though concerts have been held). There is little difference between hearing a piano re-create a performance and simply listening to a recording play back through speakers. I also think there is a certain mood or sentimental feeling associated with older recordings. Specifically in this example, Gould was known for humming while playing and this aspect of his performance is lost in translation. Perhaps on that issue alone, the whole process becomes meritless. Is it possible to reduce a performance to pitches, timing, and dynamics? or is a "re-performance" really a completely new performance. Ideas of technology versus art and levels of removal from actual live performance can take over the appreciation of the actual playing. In fact, this really makes more of a statement about the concept of recording and reproduction, becoming a meta-recording. With that said, the new recording of the recording of Glenn Gould does sound pretty amazing.

The album can be found on Amazon.com. For more info check out this article at the Washington Post.