Composer/inventor Tristan Perich is giving a series of performances across the USA on harpsichord with custom-built electronics. In his new half-hour duet, Dual Synthesis, Perich choreographs a lush intersection between antique keyboard instrument and primitive electronics. Dense flurries of notes on the harpsichord blur with patterned 1-bit tones, uniting acoustic and electric sound. On his first solo tour, Perich combines the complexity of modern classical composition and the viscerality of electric music, performing on his own harpsichord in spaces from galleries to noise venues.The Dual Synthesis tour comes on the heels of finishing his new album, 1-Bit Symphony, an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip. A complete circuit, programmed by the artist and packaged inside a standard CD jewel case, plays the music through a headphone jack mounted in the case itself. Probing the foundations of digital sound, 1-Bit Symphony celebrates the virtuosity of electricity. The new album, to be released by Cantaloupe Music, will be available exclusively for presale at performances during the tour.
Sculpting Sound, a performance by artist and vocalist Lesley Flanigan, explores both the physical and sculptural nature of sound.
Performing handcrafted speaker feedback instruments and her own singing voice, Flanigan physically sculpts electronic music from an orchestrated mix of complex tones and rhythms that originate entirely from the acoustics of live feedback and voice. Out of her deliberate choreography of motion and improvised layering of sound, Flanigan’s melodies emerge to reflect relationships between noise, amplification, speakers, and the human voice.
Moving among a cluster of speakers, wires, and microphones, Flanigan builds the framework for a series of compositions that seemingly grow and break apart throughout the performance. The music ranges from the poetic “I Used to Stand Here” for 1 speaker and 1 voice, to the dense chorale “Scale of Sound” for multiple speakers and layered voice. Every composition she navigates tells a different story about sound — from the origin, containment and remnants of sound, to the shape, size, and space of sound. These ideas resonate within her performance, which has been called both engaging and demanding.
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