CATSYNTH

cats synthesizers music art opinion

Author: catsynth

  • Live Tweeting from Polly Moller’s concert tonight

    Our friend and longtime collaborator Polly Moller is having a retrospective concert tonight. Those in the Bay Area tonight are encouraged to attend (despite the likely rain). But for those who wish to enjoy from afar, I will be live tweeting @catsynth with hash tag #pollymoller.

    Polly Moller, composer – Trinity Chamber Concerts
    Trinity Chapel
    2320 Dana Street
    Berkeley, CA

    -The Flip Quartet for four improvisers (2006)
    performed by Karl Evangelista, Jason Hoopes, Thomas Scandura and Bill Wolter

    -Duo No. 1 (premiere, 2008)
    performed by Gino Robair, cymbal
    and Krystyna Bobrowski, sliding speaker instrument

    -Penelope (premiere, 2010)
    commissioned and performed by Amy Likar, piccolo

    INTERMISSION

    -Three of Swords for a solo improviser (2009)
    performed by Sarah Elena Palmer

    – Alcyone (premiere, 2010)
    Laura Malouf-Renning, mezzo-soprano
    Phillip Greenlief, Bb clarinet
    Cory Wright, bass clarinet
    Lisa Mezzacappa, contrabass
    Suki O’Kane, percussion

    -Genesis for twelve improvisers (2006-2010)
    performed by Polly Moller (conductor)
    Suki O’Kane, percussion (Universal Time)
    Karen Stackpole, gongs
    Marianne Tomita MacDonald, harp
    Nancy Beckman, shakuhachi
    Jayn Petingill, alto saxophone
    Adria Otte, violin
    Emily Packard, violin
    Cheryl Leonard, viola
    Ann Dentel, cello
    Lisa Mezzacappa, contrabass
    and Matt Davignon, drum machine (New Universe).

  • CatSynth pic: Wicks Looper

    From rarebeasts on flickr:

    You can see other wicks looper photos as well as others by rarebeasts, some featuring his own cat Luna!

  • Wordless Wednesday: New York Against The World

    [Click to enlarge]

  • Two upcoming performances this week

    Wednesday 12/15 9PM-midnight
    Ivy Room hootelatkenanny
    kingman’s ivy room, 860 san pablo avenue Albany, CA

    Hanukkah may be over, but the Hoot still has its big barrel of boiling oil, thanks to

    The Atchleys [kattt and Kenneth]
    voice and electronics and latkes

    Dean Santomieri [with special guests]
    voice and reeds and percussion and jonathan frazen and latkes

    Amar Chaudhary
    with Dave Coen (djembe), JP (drums), Bill Wolter (guitar) and… applesauce, we need to balance this out

    I am excited about this set. It combines experimental work based on iPad instruments (including Curtis and the Korg iMS-20 app) with my recent work in jazz and jam-session performance. It should be one big rhythmic continuum that elides into the Atchleys performance. Or maybe something else. The Ivy Room shows are always a bit unpredictable 🙂

    And then on Thursday…

    Thursday 12/16 8PM-10PM
    Long Night’s Moon Concert: Droneshift
    Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market Street, San Francisco, CA

    Droneshift is a collaborative concert of improvised drone music. Between 15 and 25 musicians will gather to contribute to a continuous 2 hour drone, each adding their acoustic or electronic instruments here and there, and weaving their sounds together to create gradually shifting tapestries of music. The performance will most likely shift back and forth from completely acoustic music to electric ambiance and post-industrial noise.

    Tom Bickley – wind controller
    CJ Borosque – trumpet
    Bob Boster – processed voice
    Amar Chaudhary – iThings
    Matt Davignon – wine glasses/vessels
    Tony Dryer – bass
    Adam Fong – bass
    Phillip Greenlief – sax/clarinet
    Ron Heglin – trombone/trumpet
    Jeff Hobbs – bass, clarinet or violin
    Travis Johns – electronics
    Andrew Joron – theremin
    Aurora Josephson – voice
    Sebastian Krawczuk – bass
    David Leikam – Moog rogue synthesizer
    Cheryl Leonard – viola
    Brian Lucas – electric bass / tapes
    Melissa Margolis – accordion
    Bob Marsh – voice
    Marianne McDonald – didgeridoo
    Chad McKinney – supercollider/guitar
    Joe McMahon – didgeridoo
    David Michalak – Omnichord
    Kristin Miltner – laptop
    Ann O’Rourke – bowed cymbal
    Ferrara Brain Pan – sopranino saxophone
    Rent Romus – sax/tapes
    Ellery Royston – harp w/effects
    Lx Rudis – electronics
    Mark Soden – trumpet
    Moe! Staiano – guitar
    Errol Stewart – guitar
    Lena Strayhorn – tsaaj plaim / wind wand
    Zachary Watkins – electronics
    Rachel Wood-Rome – french horn
    Michael Zelner – analog monophonic synthesizer, iPod Touch

    This is an impressive list of musicians participating in this version of the Droneshift! I will contribute my small part with “iThings” (iPad and iPhone) and using several apps, including the drone-friendly Smule Magic Fiddle.

  • Happy 102nd Birthday to Elliott Carter

    This evening we at CatSynth wish a slightly-belated 102nd birthday to Elliott Carter. His birthday was this past Saturday, December 11. An inspiring figure, not only has he lived to an impressive age, but continues to be a prolific composer. Indeed, as reported on Sequenza21, he attended a concert in Toronto entirely of works he has composed since turning 100. They also mention that earlier last week he attended a concert in honor of that young upstart Pierre Boulez, who turned 85 this year.

    It was also interesting to see him placed in the context of the last century, from a personal connection with Charles Ives, one of the first “truly modern” American composers stretching to the current era. His work, like Ives and those that followed in that tradition, is very often very complex and often very precise in detail (and challenging to perform). Of interest to those like me who are also into mathematics alongside music, many of his formal methods with pitches and harmonies used more complex combinatorial structures than earlier serial composers, including collections of all possible pitches of a particular length – an approach that would later be categories as “musical set theory.” Many of these ideas have been collected in the Harmony Book which was published in 2002 (when Carter would have been 93).

  • CatSynth pic: Stitch and CME MIDI controller

    Stitch with a CME UF-series MIDI controller:

    Submitted by Bob Motamedi via facebook.

    This is a good time to remind readers that we welcome submissions of cat-and-music pictures via facebook, twitter @catsynth or the our handy submission form.

  • Weekend Cat Blogging #288: Saturation

    We at CatSynth are feeling pretty saturated this weekend, particularly with music and social events.  But that doesn’t stop us from posting some recent unsaturated images of Luna:

    Probably not the best pictures from a technical point of view (they were taken with odd lighting and at high ISO, the “setting of last resort”). But they still seem precious in their way.

    Weekend Cat Blogging #288 is to be hosted by Salome at PaulChens FoodBlog?!

    The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at Mind of Mog.

    And the Friday Ark is at the modulator

  • Fun with Stats: Nobel Peace Prizes by Country

    In light of today’s Nobel Prize award in peace, a little number-crunching of peace prizes by country (using this Wikipedia page as a data source).  I actually did not guess this distribution in advance.

    United States 22
    France 10
    United Kingdom 10
    Germany 6
    Ireland 5
    Sweden 5
    Belgium 4
    South Africa 4
    Switzerland 4
    Austria 3
    Israel 3
    Argentina 2
    Bangladesh 2
    Canada 2
    China 2
    Egypt 2
    Norway 2
    Poland 2
    Portugal 2
    Russia / USSR 2
    Costa Rica 1
    Czech Republic / Austria-Hungary 1
    Denmark 1
    East Timor 1
    Finland 1
    Ghana 1
    Guatemala 1
    India 1
    Iran 1
    Italy 1
    Japan 1
    Kenya 1
    South Korea 1
    Macedonia 1
    Burma (Myanmar) 1
    Mexico 1
    Netherlands 1
    Palestine 1
    Romania 1
    Vietnam 1

    You can read a speech by the most recent winner Liu Xiaobo here.

  • Wordless Wednesday: Triple Landmarks (Long Island City, New York)

  • CatSynth pic: Pallina the Synth Cat Strikes a Pose

    Two photos from Davide Mancini, via matrixsynth:

    “Pallina, my housecat. She also loves the analog warmth.”

    “Same cat, another synth. She loves to sleep near the SIEL DK80, KaossPad3 and Tenori.on power supply… should be warm and humming there…”

    We have seen Pallina before, click this tag to see her previous posts.