Image courtesy of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts
As the Interim term wraps up at The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts this week, the school celebrates tomorrow evening (Jan. 25) with a concert in the Wild Beast at 9:30 pm, featuring Sir Elton John performing remotely on the school’s Yamaha Mark IV Disklavier grand piano.
The legendary singer-songwriter broadcasts via RemoteLive technology over the web straight to The Wild Beast from Disneyland’s Hyperion Theater in Anaheim, in a concert coordinated with this year’s National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show. Joining the concert already in progress, which celebrates Yamaha’s 125th anniversary, John is expected to perform a set of four to six songs for 30-40 minutes.
Music Dean David Rosenboom explains in an email how the concert will commence:
We will see the keys of our piano move as Elton plays and hear our piano’s acoustic sound resonating live in the [Wild] Beast. Accompanying that will be Elton’s image on the screen, the sound of his voice and a backup [70-piece] orchestra over the speakers. All of this will be synchronized with our piano’s action and sound. So, it’s like Elton is playing our piano in The Wild Beast remotely over the Internet, while the sound of everything else is piped in over speakers along with a video image. Magically, it’s all synchronized.
The Yamaha Disklavier technology was first utilized at an outdoor Wild Beast concert in 2011, Jazz Crossings, featuring a bi-coastal duet written and performed by Rosenboom in California with pianist-composer-improviser J.B. Floyd in New York.
Elton John (performing remotely)
The Wild Beast, CalArts
Jan. 25, 9:30 pm
Free