Composer David Rosenboom to Perform Landmark Work at REDCAT

Update 11/4/14: The Los Angeles Times praises Rosenboom’s work.

This Saturday (Nov. 1) at REDCAT, composer and Dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts David Rosenboom presents his work Zones of Influence, a concert-length work for percussion soloist, live computer-generated electronics, piano and violin. The work was written 30 years ago during a time when linking an electro-acoustic virtuosic performer with interactive computer algorithms was a technique in its infancy. Now, Rosenboom unveils a modern take on the work updated with new software, but still featuring the original performer: celebrated percussionist William Winant.

In addition to the return of Winant, Rosenboom will perform and has enlisted collaborator Jinku Kim (Music MFA 12) to provide an immersive video environment.

The performance follows the June 20 release of the fully realized work on a double CD via the Pogus Productions label. More about the piece from Pogus:

Zones of Influence is a five-part cycle of works in which the percussionist’s performance is processed and transformed in a special way. This way involves not just transforming the percussion instruments’ sounds on an acoustic level, but processing based on information contained in complex patternings manifested in the percussionist’s performance. This constitutes real-time algorithmic processing or algorithmic composition driven by the musical structure of what the percussionist plays.

… 

Each of the five works in this set involves entirely different percussion setups, written scores and computer algorithms. Since the piece was composed before the proliferation of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), special interface electronics were constructed to connect the percussion instruments to a computer assisted digital instrument known as the Touché. This innovative, computer instrument was collaboratively designed by Donald Buchla and David Rosenboom in Berkeley, CA, in 1979-1980.