On Saturday, May 16, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra will present a program of all new works, in collaboration with renowned sound art duo Matmos, the Brooklyn-based ensemble So Percussion and shakuhachi master Riley Lee. In addition to new arrangements of music from Matmos’s Supreme Balloon and So Percussion’s Amid the Noise, the program will feature works by Princeton University senior Michael Hammond (his Senior Thesis project), Tom Lieber, Jascha Narveson, Cameron Britt, Rebecca Fiebrink, Michael Early, Sean Friar and Ted Coffey. The one-time performance will take place at 8:00pm at Richardson Auditorium on the Princeton University campus. Tickets are $15 (Tiger Tickets accepted), through Princeton University Ticketing at 609.258.9220.

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) is an ensemble of 30 laptopists—the first of its size and kind. The internationally acclaimed ensemble So Percussion is known for exploring the expressive possibilities of percussion. The sound art duo Matmos (M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel) makes live performances and recordings using the sounds of everything from amplified crayfish nerve tissue, to the pages of bibles turning, to a bowed five string banjo.

Founded in 2005 by Dan Trueman and Perry Cook, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) reinvents the traditional orchestra model for the 21st century with each musician performing with a laptop and custom designed hemispherical speaker. PLOrk has worked with guest performers and composers, including Zakir Hussain, Pauline Oliveros and others and has inspired the formation of other laptop orchestras across the world, from Oslo to Bangkok. In its short lifetime, PLOrk has been presented by Carnegie Hall, The Kitchen, the American Academy of Sciences, and has been awarded a major grant by the MacArthur Foundation.

Matmos is M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, aided and abetted by many others. Over the last nine years, the duo’s recordings have utilized the sounds liposuction surgery, field recordings of conversations in hot tubs, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun and countless other sources. Dr. Drew Daniel is a professor of English Literature at Johns Hopkins University and M.C. Schmidt is a housewife and record store janitor in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to their widely acclaimed solo records, Matmos has been featured on records by Bjork and others.

So Percussion formed at the Yale School of Music. Since then, the percussion ensemble comprised of Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski and Jason Treuting have developed a repertoire that runs the gamut from Steve Reich’s Drumming, to new commissions, including David Lang’s the so-called laws of nature, to original music, including group member Jason Treuting’s Amid the Noise. So Percussion has performed across the United States, with concerts at the Lincoln Center Festival, Carnegie Hall, Stanford Lively Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, in addition to recent tours in Russia, Australia, Italy, Spain, Germany and the Ukraine.

Riley Lee began playing the shakuhachi (bamboo flute) in Japan in 1971, studying with Chikuho Sakai until 1980, and has been a student of Katsuya Yokoyama since 1984. He was given the rank of Dai Shihan (grand master) in 1980. Lee's studies with traditional teachers in Japan have included such peculiar methods as practicing barefoot in the snow, blowing into his flute under waterfalls and in blizzards until icicles form at its end, and running the Boston Marathon and then playing taiko drums at the finish line. He has made over 50 commercially released recordings since 1980, which are sold worldwide on a number of labels.

Funding Credits
The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) has received generous funding from the MacArthur Foundation; the David Gardner ’69 Magic Fund; and the Princeton University Redistribution Initiative, Council on Science and Technology, School for Engineering and Applied Science, and the Music Department.

The Lewis Center for the Arts is part of a major initiative announced by President Shirley M. Tilghman in 2006 to fully embrace the arts as an essential part of the educational experience for all who study and teach at Princeton University. The Lewis Center for the Arts will have a significant impact on the University and the larger community it serves. The public is welcomed to a full range of lectures, exhibitions, concerts and performances at the Center. Many of the Center’s events are free or charge a nominal admission fee.