Black Moon Commission

Carnegie Hall commissioned a new piece to premiere on October 28, 2016 at Zankel Hall at Carnegie. Meanwhile, I gave a public presentation on the technology and tried  out some sketches, called Red Moon, at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York on March 5, 2016 in their CoLABoratory series. More details here. After the music program, members of the audience had a chance to try out the Kinect Controller, and conduct music themselves.

The summer has zoomed by, and the piece is finally complete. With the assistance of composer Paul Turowski (who has just finished his Phd here at UVA and joined the faculty at the University of Liverpool), we made a couple of technology shifts after the experience of the CoLAB. Rather than using left-hand gestures to start the electronic sounds, we are using a foot switch, and saving the gestural control for moving the sound in space. This gives the conductor a lot more flexibility, as it is no longer crucial to control the left hand movements so much. Now, it is only used to move the sound in the stereo space, and I have been careful to use that only at special moments in the design of the piece. Looking forward to putting it all together the week of October 28! You can find out more and get your tickets here.

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