Music Meets Tech #24: Visual Recital in Brazil, Part 1 - Pictures at an Exhibition
I finally received the DVD video and CD audio files for my performances at the I Virtuosi Festival in Recife, Brazil this past December! The stage crew did a fantastic job getting the Visual Recital setup together - and what a terrific setup, with the images filling up the entire back wall of the theater!
Here is the first portion of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", with the following sections to be presented as consecutive video podcasts. The entire performance will eventually be available as a hi-def video download.
This video performance is being presented as a Quicktime Video file (approximately 52.5 MB) and as an iPod-compatible Video Podcast (77 MB for the video iPod format). Running time is appoximately 9.5 minutes. .
Things are really beginning to move forward for the Visual Recital concept! Last week i had the opportunity to have lunch with Elizabeth Serkin, daughter of legendary pianist Rudolph Serkin, and Thomas DeWolfe , director of a wonderful classical music outreach program to public schools in Greenport, NY to discuss ideas for how the Visual Recital could be used to connect with young audiences that have had absolutely no exposure to classical music. Much enthusiasm ensued over a delicious lunch at Branzino's! Looks like we'll be aiming to put together a combination workshop/performance project for sometime in the fall, possibly in November, and maybe even some other collaborations with local art institutions in the near future...
The following day, in a small classroom at Juilliard i had the opportunity to get together with three Astral Artists - violinist Jennifer Curtis, cellist Susan Babini, and pianist Michael Mizrahi - to demonstrate the Visual Recital and brainstorm about creating a new show in collaboration with them.
Being able to expose classical musicians to cutting edge technologies like the Tablet PC and multimedia enhancements to live performances is a tremendous credit to both the visionary outlook of Astral Artistic Services and the creative open-mindedness of the artists in their roster!
We're hoping to put together a program of three piano trio movements from Beethoven, Brahms and Paul Schoenfield's "Cafe Music" for a trial outreach at a North Philadelphia public school in May. After having been the only one designing, assembling and operating the whole system single-handedly, it's going to be a lot of fun 'handing this off' to other performers!
Equally exciting will be the opportunity for the Astral Artists to borrow some of my computer equipment to get some real 'hands on' time with all the technologies i've been so passionate about.
Michael's even open to the idea of trying out my digital piano setup! I can't wait to get his reaction to a program like Pianoteq...
A warm "Thank You" to Bonnie Slobodien, director of Astral's outreach and education programs, for sharing the wonderful pictures! I'll be sure to keep you all posted on the young wings of the Visual Recital concept!
Making Art Music Mobile: Visual Recital at a Public School
I just finished putting the video together for my performance of Poulenc's "The Story of Babar" for my sons' elementary school. I'd love to get feedback on the quality of the digital piano setup, using Pianoteq's Piano Simulator (running off of my old Toshiba M205 Tablet PC, my very first tablet pc!) Since i needed the M-Audio Fast Track Pro to interface the MIDI cables and JBL speakers, i was stuck using my Samson C-01U USB microphone for a mono recording of the show, but i'm still rather pleased at the overall quality of the digital piano performance.
The picture above links to a Quicktime version of the video. To see it as a Windows WMV file, click here.
As i've stated before, i'm hoping that with this digital setup that i'll be able to offer performance options in non-traditional venues. With piano simulator technologies like the one Pianoteq offers, digital music setups can feel so much more artistically satisfying!
I finally received the DVD video and CD audio files for my performances at the I Virtuosi Festival in Recife, Brazil this past December! The stage crew did a fantastic job getting the Visual Recital setup together - and what a terrific setup, with the images filling up the entire back wall of the theater!
