‘I like to think about ways to play with sound, and see what I find," says Dan Trueman. Trueman is a composer who works frequently with computers — he’s one of the founders of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLork) — and a violinist who specializes in the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. A music professor at Princeton University, he combines the two as part of his most recent project, a collaboration with the quartet So Percussion.
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Graphic designer Danielle Aubert and percussionist/composer Jason Treuting will come to Princeton University in the fall to begin two years of teaching and collaboration as the first Fellows in the Creative and Performing Arts. The program provides support for early-career artists who have demonstrated both extraordinary promise and a record of achievement in their fields with the opportunity to further their work while teaching within a liberal arts context.
First, the piano illustrated a few hushed, tentative steps, hopping and plodding around. Then, the exhilaration of those first few notes led into increasingly fluent motions — confident jazz riffs, balletic rhapsodies, elaborate melodies. In “Stumble to Grace: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra,” Steven Mackey drew inspiration from watching his son learn to walk.
Using laptops, tablets, and six sided speakers, Princeton University's Laptop Orchestra teaches students the art of creating and coding music. It's neither Mozart nor Star Wars.
The concluding work on coLABoratory, the American Composers Orchestra’s April 5 Zankel Hall concert, was an extremely effective symbiosis of music and film called New York: A City Symphony by Troy Herion. Throughout its roughly fifteen-minute duration, audience members occasionally gasped or laughed—not a frequent occurrence at a performance of contemporary classical music. I know I was at the edge of my seat for most of it.
When running a kitchen, it’s important to stock all the essential ingredients, of course. But you need to start with the hardware. The Princeton Sound Kitchen grew out of the basic necessity of providing a performance ensemble for Princeton University composers. In fact, before its sharp name change, it was known simply as the Composers Ensemble.
This month, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra welcomes pianist Orli Shaham for the East Coast premiere of Princeton University professor and composer Steven Mackey’s Stumble to GraceConcerto for Piano and Orchestra. The NJSO co-commissioned the concerto with the St. Louis Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Recently, Mackey chatted with NJSO: Backstage about the concerto’s creation and the NJSO’s performances of the work in his own state.
Does music have to have rhythm? Are leaves rustling in the breeze music? How might a spoken word poem inspire a composer? The 20 Princeton students in the new course "The Improvising Ensemble" are discovering answers to these kinds of questions as well as pushing the boundaries of their own concepts of what music is and can be
The path to the music room in Steven Mackey’s spacious Princeton home is lined with toys: a phalanx of toddler-size vehicles, a toy kitchen, a Thomas the Tank Engine table crisscrossed with rail tracks. Next to the brightly colored plastic objects, the black grand piano takes on the wryly amused look of a buttoned-up uncle at a birthday party, besieged on all sides by cheerful chaos.
Construction of the new arts building to house a performance wing of the Department of Music will begin in spring 2013.
