Oops – I was supposed to help publicize that microtonal wunderkind Jacob Barton is giving a concert tonight on the microtonal instrument he’s invented, the udderbot. It’s at 8 PM at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center. In Illinois, in other words. He’s playing his own version of my piece Fractured Paradise, along with works by Susan Parenti, Aaron K. Johnson, Joseph Pehrson, Edwin Harkins, Bohuslav Martinu, and, well, there are a lot of names as you can see for yourself. The udderbot is made of a glass bottle, a rubber glove, and water, yet possesses a range larger than that of the flute. I’ve been very impressed with Jacob’s initiative in performing so much microtonal work out there in the Midwest, and impressed with his own music as well.
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Barton is a real champ at performing new xenharmonic music. Some of his own music is dynamite too.
Here’s a youtube vid of the udderbot
And here’s Barton doing a piece called “Polyanna.”
Jacob is awesome. He’s incredibly agile in manipulating various scale systems and exerts huge efforts evangelizing the benefits of microtones in a subtle and gentle way that people don’t even realize they’re being converted.
Thanks for saying such nice things!
Live concert audio:
http://www.archive.org/details/AnUdderbotRecital