The University at Albany Department of Music is pleased to present a concert of music from The Extensible Toy Piano Festival on Sunday, March 4, 2007 at 3pm in the Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center on the uptown campus.   

 

Two years ago, the Extensible Toy Piano Project sponsored an international composition competition that attracted dozens of entries from around the world. It culminated with a festival at Clark University in Worcester, MA with the world premiere of nine new compositions by composers from Japan, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.  Although different from one another in almost every conceivable way, these nine winning compositions all tried to answer the same question: can the relatively limited toy piano be extended and expanded musically with new audio technology?  Project director Matt Malsky explains the impetus behind the project and the festival, “John Cage brought the toy piano from a treasured play thing to a bona fide musical instrument.  Our aim is to bring it into the 21st century.”

 

The concert’s program will present highlights from last year's festival as well as the piece that inspired the project: John Cage's classic of the genre Music for Amplified Toy Pianos. The compositions range from a microtonal/related-complex-tempo-structures-tape piece built from toy piano samples to an extended free improvisation with an "extensible" toy piano instrument (a computer-assisted, post-prepared-piano noise-maker). Music will be performed using laptop computers as instruments and computers will be used to process live-performed toy pianos. The program will feature compositions by festival organizers David Claman and Matt Malsky as well as works by Atsushi Yoshinaka, Andrian Pertout, Jeff Morris, Howard Kenty & Konrad Kaczmarek. UAlbany faculty members Nancy Newman and Robert Gluck will join last year's XTP festival players which include Kenty, Kaczmarek and Claman.

 

Tickets are $8 for the general public and $4 for students and may be purchased through the Performing Arts Center Box Office.  For further information, contact the Box Office at (518) 442-3997 or visit the Performing Arts Center website at www.albany.edu/pac.

 

 

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