This evening I attended a concert given by
Kyle Gann. Kyle Gann is a music critic for the Village Voice, a musicologist and a more importantly, a composer.
The first half of the show was dominated by alternating pieces for Disclavier and Synthesizer/Tape. The Disklavier (for those who haven't had the pleasure) is a modern day player-piano made by Yamaha, midi controlled, and a gorgeous instrument. I had the opportunity to write a piece or two for it back in my Oberlin days, allowing me to write serial piano pieces that I would never be able to play myself. The benefit of this instrument above a standard midi piano is that the end result is an actual grand piano playing your song (including all variances in attach and touch). Kyle Gann found a home with the instrument, exploiting it's ability for speed and inhuman piano riffs. The Disklavier pieces ranged from a Beethoven Medley (an assemblage of the Sonatas, left in their original key), to a piece called "Bud Ran Back Out, "a super-human rendition of "In walked Bud." In this latter piece, Kyle says he "added some tricks that [Bud] Powell might have envied, such as playing his ultrafast melodies in chromatic sixths and triple octaves, and simulaneous melodies in tempo ratios of 7 against 8 against 9." In short, it was mindblowing.
The synthesizer pieces were microtonal, and consisted of Kyle playing a Kurzweil keyboard accompanied by a CD tapestry of fairly standard and unmodified synthesizer instruments. These pieces were jarring to a mind expecting well-tempered intervals, and when the sounds first hit the audience, I spotted at least a few looks in the audience that seemed to ask "Is this out of tune?" Typically, the temperaments Kyle used would gradually become "normal" after the first minute (the human mind is so adaptable!) His choice to alternate between his monstrous equal tempered Disklavier pieces and the less accessible microtonal pieces kept me on my toes, requiring mental adaption as each piece began.
The second half of the show was devoted to his "electronic cantata," called "Custer and Sitting Bull." This one-man microtonal opera was compelling. Once again, a shift was necessary, this time to welcome Kyle The Actor as he executed precise (but natural) motions with his body and spoke into a microphone to a background music track. The short opera consisted of Kyle speaking the words of George Custer and Sitting Bull, often in exact (and intricate) rhythms to an accompanying musical track. After the show I overhead Kyle say that he had made no mistakes, which was impressive considering the length of the piece, the challenging rhythms and his movement on-stage, which was executed with the possessed devotion of a character actor.
I am still unsure of my personal attachment to microtonal and other-tempered scales. I appreciated the exposure to something completely new, something to which I have no experience in, an alternate world of music that I will never fully explore myself. The primary concern I had (which I would love to ask Kyle about) is the lack of audience vocabulary in these alternate music worlds. With most styles in western music, equal temperament is a common thread that allows the listener to use past experience to 'understand' and process the music. In Kyle's case, one is completely subjected to a new world, akin to being thrown into a society where not only do you not know the 'rules,' but you also do not speak the language. These experiences are humbling, but can border on alienating. Luckily, Kyle draws you in with such wide variety of styles (and warm smiles) that it is difficult to not feel welcome.
Kyle Gann's Online BlogKyle's MP3 download pageMp3 of "Bud Ran Back Out"-Mark
