Blindear at Gershwin

Ryan’s been involved in an ensemble called Blindear. They have been having concerts at the Gershwin Hotel on 27th and 5th avenue. The idea behind this ensemble seemed to be to give composers a new avenue to explore New Music, especially with electronics and live performance. Their first performance covered live instruments, electronics, interesting items, such as the theremin, and drum beats from Brazil.

This being said, after the first concert, they have been fixated on this idea of loops. The co-founder, Jacub Ciupinski, created a program that feeds the player bars of music via computer. The idea being that the composer can feed the players music in real time, thus composing on the fly in real time. The composers are asked to create bars of music that the composer will construct together at the concert.

They are still ironing out the details, but this last concert had a really warm reception. I’m impressed and glad to find that it wasn’t a one shot wonder. They played one performance with 2 flutes and 3 string players and did another one with just 8 string players. As I understand it, the composers are constantly making new “loops” to try out. It’s interesting to see an ensemble like this grow… sort of organically, through concept, into sound and diversity of repertoire.

It’s interesting, because, so many things can go wrong with a wireless network. Interference, network droppage, ip problems… I mean I encountered so many of them on a daily basis while working for the Dept. of Ed. It’s a monster of a project…

It’s a fun gig and I wonder how things will spin out from here. If you’re in the area, you should definitely check it out!