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Taylor Deupree/Kenneth Kirschner, "May"
A single track live collaboration between the two New York composers, this was recorded in Portugal last year and focuses on the duo's interest in the composite of piano and digital music, both in the sense of laptop processing piano, and as the two working in harmony as different instruments. The result is a beautiful collage of sounds that never sounds like to disparate technologies in competition, but working together in a complex piece of art.
For the performance, both artists sat together at a grand piano, both playing the instrument and their own respective laptops, while Kirschner focused on the keys, Deupree manipulated the strings of the piano, causing it to make uncharacteristic and unnatural tones.The piece opens with soft electronic washes, digital strings, and traditional sounding piano, an ambient electronic sound that is not too far removed from the likes of Tangerine Dream.
Eventually the more electronic elements slink away to put the focus on music box like notes, piano, and electronic chimes, then allowing ambient synth passages and light, crackling static to take the spotlight.This is later met with the sounds of muted piano strings and reversed delays, leading to film-like tension that is never overpowering, but definitely noteworthy.
The sustained passages of tone and twinkling piano dominate the middle portion of the piece, quiet and distant sounds stretching out into the frigid air.Alien noises enter to duet with the piano, gong like synthetic pulses and warm staticy bits round out this part of the performance.This is supplanted by higher end electronic buzzing and more defined, untreated piano playing swelling to the surface to become the focus.
As the piece heads towards its conclusion, a stronger static buzzing noise takes over before the ending, in which the layers of piano and electronics are slowly stripped away, leaving only the most rudimentary tones and light, vinyl-like static elements remaining before dropping to a series of stuttering rhythmic pulses, perhaps the final digital fragments of the sound being drawn out.
Throughout its 36-minute duration, this collaboration shifts and flows, but it stays rather similar throughout.There are no drastic changes, for better or worse.While I personally tend to prefer long form compositions like this to have some elements that completely shock or disorient, I don’t think that would have worked in this setting, which is based more on subtle beauty than dissonant exercises in laptop abuse.
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