Liked on YouTube: Tête-à-Tête – New Music for Toy Piano | Concert | NottNOISE

Tête-à-Tête – New Music for Toy Piano | Concert | NottNOISE
To feed back, please fill in our survey: https://bit.ly/3ogIHuj Part of NottNOISE New Music Marathon, 29 November 2020. For full programme see https://bit.ly/3mhRJX5 #NottNOISE #NottFAR ___ Pascal Meyer and Xenia Pestova Bennett, toy pianos. Helen Papaioannou Glow Sticks John Cage Music for Amplified Toy Pianos Duncan MacLeod By the Light of The Moon Nina C. Young Tête-à-Tête Duncan MacLeod Cut, Strike, Throw, Grip Helen Papaioannou Glow Sticks For Glow Sticks, I combined the two toy piano parts with sounds created using a Microbrute synthesizer. I imagined the performers triggering a phantom glow every time they touched the keys, layering winding synth sounds with the shimmering and clacking of the toy pianos. I composed this piece in June 2020. It was wonderful to work (remotely!) with Xenia and Pascal and to connect with them during a difficult lockdown period. Website - https://bit.ly/2HOt913 John Cage Music for Amplified Toy Pianos This is a composition indeterminate of its performance. Cage’s score is made from 7 sheets of transparent plastic: 2 sheets with points (referring to the keys of rods of the piano[s]); 2 with circles (piano amplification); 2 with points within circles (noise); and 1 with a graph and a straight line. The transparent sheets are superimposed to create a single reading, and any number of readings may be made. In any performance, the toy piano(s) is (are) amplified via contact microphones. Loudspeakers should also be distributed around the performance space. Duncan MacLeod By the light of the moon By the light of the moon is the first in a series of short works for acoustic instrument and electronics that draws upon the writings of Edward Lear. In this work I start with Lear’s famed poem The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, more specifically the third verse in which our protagonists dance ‘By the light of the moon’. Throughout the work, electronics are used to create an imaginary nocturnal soundscape in which Owl and Pussy-Cat dance to the tune of the toy piano, with piano providing moonlight. Website - https://bit.ly/3miLItb Nina C. Young Tête-à-Tête Tête-a-tête: a private conversation between two people. Two musicians seated at toy pianos engage in vacuous, loving, playful, and sometimes immensely serious face-to-face conversation. They vigorously type coded messages upon their keyboards and send them off to one another with the chime of a desk bell. Sometimes typing, texting, and gestures of symbolism come easier than spoken words. Website - https://bit.ly/3o6h2Mf Instagram - @composernina Twitter - @composernina Duncan MacLeod Cut, Strike, Throw, Grip Cut, Strike, Throw, Grip draws upon the ornamentation used in the ancient Highland Bagpipe and Clarsach music known as Pibroch or Ceol Mor. Comprised of a theme and variations Pibroch utilises elaborate ornamentation as a means to mark and decorate each variation. To the naked ear the detail of these ornaments can be easily missed, due in part to the lightning speed at which they are played. On closer listening however they are in fact distinct and highly expressive melodies in and of themselves. As such, Cut Strike Throw Grip is an ode and response to these ornaments, the names which give this work its title. Website - https://bit.ly/3miLItb