Volume 21 Issue 8 - May 2016

Beat by Beat | In with the New
Minimalism
And Beyond
WENDALYN BARTLEY
If you are a fan of minimalist
music and are craving more
after the recent performances
of Steve Reich’s music in
Toronto, you’ll want to experience
Surface Image, performed
by Vancouver-born pianist
Vicky Chow and composed by
American Tristan Perich. The
hour-long piece characterized
by a constant pulse of repetitive
rhythmic patterns for piano and
electronics will be performed
at the Music Gallery on May 14
and at the Open Ears Festival
in Kitchener on May 28. Chow
commissioned the work in 2013
and already there is a recording
on the New Amsterdam label
along with a growing list of live
performances. As she said in a
recent phone interview, “It just
happens to be a piece people
are interested in, and I end up
performing it a lot.”
The piece begins for solo
piano, with patterns based
on one harmony and simple
Vicky Chow
rhythms. As the first section
unfolds, the electronics slowly enter, and before you know it you’re
immersed in a huge sea of piano and electronics. Throughout the
piece, the relationship between the live piano part and the electronics
changes, as human and machine dance with the other.
Accompanying, supporting, leading, following and departing from
one another, each of the sections highlights different ways the piano
and electronic sounds interact with one another. Each section is like
a different planet with a completely different mood, becoming almost
like its own island in the larger ocean of sound.
The electronics component consists of 40 speakers, each individually
connected to an electronic circuit board. Each of
these boards has its own program which generates lo-fi
1-bit electronic sounds through its attached speaker.
Once the entire system is turned on, it runs on its own.
Chow likened the process to an electronic greeting card,
where once you open it, the piece turns on and just
goes. Unlike Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians for
example, where the number of repetitions of patterns
can be varied, Surface Image is precisely notated from
beginning to end. The main variations that occur
happen due to the type of acoustic space the work
is performed in and the way the sound is reflected.
Usually the 40 speakers are set up flanking the piano,
but if the space is narrow, a different arrangement will
be needed, with the speakers closer together. Chow told
me, “Every time I play the piece, I hear different parts
of the electronics. Depending on the space, the sound
bounces in different ways and there have been times
when I’ve wondered if I was in the right place in the
score, since I hadn’t heard that part before.”
Chow is the pianist for the well-known Bang on
a Can All-Stars ensemble based in New York City. She initially met
Perich through a Bang on a Can summer festival, and was drawn to his
work because of his ability to combine 1-bit sound technology with
writing for the acoustic piano. It is this mix of piano and electronics
that lies at the heart of her musical passions. And although Surface
Image can be defined as being part of the minimalist aesthetic, she
doesn’t consider herself a minimalist pianist. She’s more interested in
finding ways that push at the boundaries of the piano repertoire and
canon, rather than just a specific genre of music.
Besides her work performing with the All-Stars
ensemble, Chow has a flourishing solo career and is
increasingly finding herself working with Canadian
composers such as Eliot Britton from Winnipeg and
Adam Basanta from Montreal. In this context, she is
able to pursue her interest in piano and electronics.
For example, in a work by Basanta created for piano
and hand-held mini transducers, devices that needs a
resonant body in order to make sound, Chow performs
the work by manipulating the transducers on different
areas of the piano strings and frame. Her forthcoming
album on the New Amsterdam label will feature six
works for both prepared piano and piano with different
forms of electronics, including tape, prerecorded piano
sounds and live processing. One upcoming venture will
be a collaboration with Montreal-based drummer Ben
Reimer. Together they have commissioned works from
Canadians Vincent Ho and electronics wizard Nicole
Lizée to be premiered at next years PuSh Festival in
Vancouver.
Open Ears Festival: From May 26 to June 4 the
Waterloo region will once again be taken over by
the sounds of the Open Ears Festival. At the heart
of this festival is the act of listening to a diverse
range of musics – including new classical, electroacoustic,
musique actuelle and sound installations.
As mentioned, Surface Image will be performed on
May 28, and the composer and media artist Tristan
Perlich will be in attendance on May 29. He will be
presenting an artist talk at 1pm covering the range of his work,
including his Machine Drawings which will be on display, and his
explorations into 1-bit music and other sound-based technologies.
Continuing on with the theme of electronics, the concert June 2
will focus on works for the theremin, the world’s first motion sensor
music instrument patented in the United States in 1928 after being
originally developed by Léon Theremin when he lived in Russia and
was working on a government research program. The concert at Open
Ears will begin with author Sean Michaels reading from his historical
novel, Us Conductors, to set the scene for the theremin’s beginnings.
Next, an influential work for the theremin and chamber ensemble,
Carolina Eyck
playing the
theremin.
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