The piano and the garden are both sites of control, the former holding pitches rigidly in place as the latter selectively withholds and allows growth. Both can be linked to long standing structures of cultural normativity that govern the way we interact with natural phenomena, whether they be plants or vibrating airwaves.
Over a week, students will take the piano as their site, designing preparations that alter the piano to produce a wider palette of sounds. The results will be performed in a public concert on Friday 26 April in the AA Lecture Hall. A premiere piano piece by composer Theo Alexander will be performed in a cycle with students installing their preparations in real time.
THEO ALEXANDER is a Chinese-Malaysian/British composer. His music frequently features the use of tape loops and samples that are played alongside parts for the live instruments that they are taken from. Whilst many of his pieces are piano-focused, he has also written voice, organ, and mixed ensembles. His work has been supported by Britten-Pears Arts, Villa Filanda Antonini, and Meetfactory among others, and his music is released by Arts & Crafts. Outside of composing, he is curator of modern and contemporary art Kunsthalle Praha.
