February 12, 2012

First Recordings of Harp/Theremin project finished!

Category: recording — admin @ 7:52 pm

see "The Golden Strings of the Forbidden Planet"...part of this year's Rogue Performance Festival--the first weekend in March.

I’ve been spending hours obsessing over these tapes– every single night for about two weeks.

These recordings are the first fruits of our labors. Ellie Choate (harp), John Shafer (percussion), and myself are working up a body of material that will feature the harp and the theremin. One of our first public performances will be for the 11th annual Rogue Performance Festival. My friend Brad Hufft, through the non-profit new-music assosiaction “Orpheus”, is sponsoring this show, along with some others in the festival. Our recordings, along with the works of some local electronic music composers, will be released on CD compilation available in March. Our show is called “The Golden Strings of the Forbidden Planet!”..click here for more info.

So, on top of trying to put together a set of music to perform, we’ve also been hustling to get these tapes in shape. And while the theremin can sometimes be forgiven its rather ….unique approach to ‘tuning accuracy’ in-person (you know, with all that magical arm waving to distract the audience), on a recording, you need it to be just right—and this is straight to analogue tape. No Pro-Tools. No ‘auto-tune’. This brings us back to those words “obsessing” and “every single night”. But as of this morning, when just a couple more lines were re-recorded, and one last piece mixed (for the…upteenth time), it is signed, sealed and delivered.

Here is the list of our first performances. Come see them all—and buy the CD!

Sun., Feb. 26 at 3pm in the Ellipse Gallery of Fresno State’s Henry Madden Library.

Fri. March 2nd  6:15pm at Veni Vidi Vici–part of the Rogue Performance Festival

Sat. March 3rd at 3:45pm at Veni Vidi Vici–part of the Rogue Performance Festival

Sun. March 4th at 2:30pm at Veni Vidi Vici–part of the Rogue Performance Festival

Thurs. March 8th at 8pm at The Tower Theater–opening for Herman Rarebell of The Scorpions