Dear Colleagues, I was chatting with Bill Schull recently about the Extended Piano Techniques Summit that will be part of the exceptional activities offered up at WestPac 2012 in Salt Lake City later this month. Bill urged me to communicate with other CAUTs about just what will be going on. All day Saturday there will be classes offered as part of a symposium on extended techniques, for which we expect a cadre of pianists and composers to attend in addition to those interested piano technicians who are already there for WestPac. Contrary to widespread misconception, my solo portion of this day is FIRST PERIOD ONLY. The class will pivot on a 30 minute video we made at CalArts years ago called "Non-Traditional Piano Use". It is based largely on the book "The Well-Prepared Piano" by Richard Evans (formerly Bunger), but goes far beyond what Evans covered in his book (and with the huge added advantage of video images and sound). I will be providing back story to the motivation for creating the video, considering what it has meant to the students and faculty at CalArts, and following it with several discussion points about particular challenges that have arisen (more like "reared their ugly heads, actually) over the years here at the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts. I will also present supplementary material that our faculty have developed for use in conjunction with the video. The other three class periods of the Extended Piano Techniques Summit will be: period 2) a panel discussion of technicians, pianists and composers attempting to agree on what is kosher in this realm (and, of course, what is not!), and; periods 3) & 4) pianists discussing George Crumb's "Makrokosmos" and John Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes," truly two of the seminal works involving extended piano techniques (the Cage--prepared piano, played on the keys with the fingers; the Crumb involving playing inside the piano as well). These same pianists will be performing those very pieces in the concert at 7:30 that evening which caps off the days activities. That event will also feature the bowed piano music of Stephen Scott as well as two World Premieres by CalArts based composers, "Euphotic" by Ulrich Kreiger and "Vortex Etude" by D. M. A. candidate Milen Kirov. Those last two will be performed by PTG's own Neema Pazargad, who holds an MFA in piano performance from CalArts. SO, far be it from me to want to command anyone's attention for an entire day, but for those particularly interested in being dazzled by my extraordinary personality (;-) and treasure-trove of combat experience in the realm of extended piano techniques, they need to get their fannies out of bed first thing Saturday morning and come experience the sheer energy of someone who routinely keeps farmers hours ;;-). See you in Salt Lake! Alan Eder, RPT P. S. Please feel free to forward this to whomever. ae -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/20120207/1e421897/attachment.htm>
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