In her program “The Body Electric,” Oni Buchanan explores the body of the piano circulating with electricity. Situated somewhere between artistic collaboration and emergent artificial intelligence, the pieces on this program showcase many of the incredible interactions that are possible between piano and electronic accompaniment.

Three women composers make up the first half of the program. Missy Mazzoli’s haunted (and haunting) dream-piece Isabelle Eberhardt Dreams of Pianos half-recollects sounds of the past, while Mei Fang Lin’s wispy, artificial insect wings drift over propulsive rhythms, blending digital and acoustic sound in unexpected interactions. Carolyn Yarnell’s The Same Sky is an epic of stasis and transformation, and calls for a video of moving clouds to be projected on the inside of the raised piano lid while the music warps and weaves.

The men of the second half have equally dissimilar approaches. Michel Gonneville’s Chute-Parachute descends through a pointillistic stratosphere, looking for (and never seeming to find) the right note on which to land. Keith Kirchoff’s Adventures of Norby roams everywhere from Baroque to hard rock. Finally, Jacob TV’s hilarious The Body of Your Dreams incorporates (and finds the music hidden in) audio snippets taken from an infomercial.

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Works to be performed on “The Body Electric” program include:

Missy Mazzoli, Isabelle Eberhardt Dreams of Pianos (2007)
Mei-Fang Lin, Interaction (2001)
Carolyn Yarnell, The Same Sky (2000)
Michel Gonneville, Chute-Parachute (1989)
Keith Kirchoff, The Adventures of Norby (2007)
Jacob Ter Veldhuis, The Body of Your Dreams (2002)

Program offered October and November, 2011.