This concert will feature a program of two sets of music performed by two duos. Violist Daniel Lamas and pianist WeiWei Zhai will present works by composers who studied at the Paris Conservatoire, including Cesar Franck and Nadia Boulanger, in music that invokes nostalgia and stimulates the imagination. Eli Asher and Zach Lapidus will perform music that they have been collaborating on remotely, both for their own instruments as well as for non-traditional electronic instruments of their own design.
Concert 1: Midnight in Paris: an evening of imaginative works for viola and piano
WeiWei Zhai, piano
Daniel Lamas, viola
This program features works by three prominent French composers who all at one time or another studied at the Paris Conservatoire.
Each selected work invokes nostalgia and stimulates the imagination; transporting the audience to Paris and being emotionally interactive with those extraordinary musical figures of the late 19th – early 20th century.
Program:
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
Sonata no. 1 “sur des themes inédits et anonymes du XVIIIe siècle”.
II. Francais
Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979)
Trois pieces
I. Modéré
II. Sans vitesse et à l’aise
III. Vite et nerveusement rythmé
Cesar Franck (1822-1890)
Sonata for violin and piano (transcribed for viola)
Finale: Allegretto poco mosso
Concert 2: Internet Intermezzi
Zach Lapidus — Yamaha Disklavier (piano), Max/MSP, and modular synthesizer
Eli Asher — trumpet, SuperCollider, midi controllers, and Nintendo WiiMotes
Performers, even improvising ones, are typically control freaks regarding their instruments, practicing and preparing extensively in order to maintain equilibrium as much as possible during a performance. In this concert, Zach and Eli are performing not only with their primary instruments but with non-traditional electronic instruments of their own design, also contending with their duo-partner playing notes and taking control of each other’s instruments over the internet. Zach and Eli have been working remotely, yet collaboratively to develop and discover ways for their technology to send sound and musical information to each other in order to compose musical material for this performance, as well as to improvise live at a distance. They have prepared three electroacoustic works of a variety of textures and moods for a new kind of collaborative performance.
Program:
Music by Eli Asher and Zach Lapidus
“Stowaway”
“Burán”
“Laptop, Four Hands”
