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Bruce Brubaker on all things piano

Raggin’ the Classics

April 22, 2019 by Bruce Brubaker

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet…”

William Shakespeare: King John

Electronica artist Max Cooper and I launch a new project this spring, a collaboration called “Glassforms.” It’s a commission from the Philharmonie de Paris and we will play it as part of their Philip Glass weekend in May. Shows follow in London, Barcelona, and Bordeaux. 

We overlay electronic sounds — onto piano music by Glass. There have been Glass remixes before, “Glassforms” is something else. Live onstage, I play an acoustic grand piano (with MIDI output), and the computer, the synths, the electronic effects respond to what I do, differently at each performance. The MIDI information coming from the piano allows precise rhythmic syncing, making possible many layers of correspondence between real-time details in piano playing and electronic sound. Max’s algorithms generate material that may precisely coincide with the rhythms I play, or, alternately, add greater complexity to the overall rhythm fabric of the music. The colors and the mixture of the colors of the electronic sounds are highly controlled yet vary considerably. As I am playing “Glassforms,” I am frequently surprised. It’s like playing chamber music with a colleague who plays different pitches and rhythms in their part every night!

Geoffrey Hulme: Glass Blowing, Harry Hassent and No. 8 Pot

In “Glassforms,” everything emanates from the touching of the piano keys. If I don’t play, no electronic sounds are heard. I can provoke the synths to make sounds by silently depressing piano keys. I sometimes do this in the short interludes that I improvise between pieces. In the interludes, I also make sounds by playing on the keys in the conventional way. We are giving the classics of the Philip Glass piano repertoire a 21st-century context, or frame, or new clothes!

There’s a long history of arranging and rearranging music for keyboard. The very earliest keyboard music adapts pre-existing vocal music. Virtuoso pianists have made transcriptions of famous pieces with new fashionable harmonies or fancy embellishment, Leopold Godowsky’s chromaticizations around Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony, Godowsky’s arrangement or Sorabji’s adaptation of Chopin’s so-called “Minute” Waltz — or Marc-André Hamelin’s mannerist “Minute-Waltz” comedy! Arrangements can be modernizations. There are Robert Schumann’s piano accompaniments for Paganini’s solo violin caprices, or Charles Gounod’s melody added to the first prelude of The Well-Tempered Clavier.

Around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, there was a taste for ragtime versions of familiar classical piano pieces. Some were published — or these treatments might be spontaneous. James P. Johnson and others were known for “raggin’ the classics,” syncopated rhythms and jumping accompaniments applied to well-known piano favorites. This was a bridging between musical practices, also a societal interconnection. Perhaps “Glassforms” does something similar…

The music of Philip Glass is not exactly “classical” music. I do play it on an acoustic grand piano. For many, the big grand piano is a symbol of “high” European culture. Max Cooper’s electronic sound world is associated with dance clubs or dance music festivals. The largest number of people listening to music in the world today are hearing electronically processed sounds. The effects of electricity may be subtle. Often though, our electronic processes lead to transformations of musical sound and design. In popular music there’s a strong attraction to obvious manipulation of the human voice (the vocoder), and to looping and beats made possible by the computer. “Glassforms” brings acoustic piano music into that electronically enabled 21st-century practice of music. 

As early as the 1970s, Karlheinz Stockhausen suggested that the satisfying presentation of piano music in a concert hall would require elaborate amplification, so that a large audience could hear the small details of piano inflection that can be clear in sound recordings. Soon after the beginning of the 21st century, Nico Muhly and I played “Haydnseek.” Electronic sounds, melodies, extended harmony, distortion were all added to piano sonatas by Franz Joseph Haydn played in real time by me (and slightly amplified). Some points in the performance were like putting graffiti on Haydn’s music, Nico said.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arrangement, Barbican, Barcelona, Cooper, electronica, Glass, Glassforms, Glasstronica, Godowsky, Hamelin, Haydnseek, ICA, InFiné, Marc-Andre, Max, Max Cooper, MIDI, Muhly, Nico, Nico Muhly, Paris, Passages, Phiharmonie, Philharmonie de Paris, Philip, Philip Glass, piano, remix, Sonar, Sorabji, Sound Unbound, transcription, virtuoso

Trackbacks

  1. Raggin’ the Classics – Earl R. Merrill says:
    April 23, 2019 at 4:59 am

    […] Electronica artist Max Cooper and I launch a new project this spring, a collaboration called Glassforms. We overlay electronic sounds — onto piano music by Glass. There have been Glass remixes before; Glassforms is something else. – Bruce Brubaker […]

  2. Raggin’ the Classics | Meisner Acting Tips says:
    April 23, 2019 at 5:15 am

    […] Electronica artist Max Cooper and I launch a new project this spring, a collaboration called Glassforms. We overlay electronic sounds — onto piano music by Glass. There have been Glass remixes before; Glassforms is something else. – Bruce Brubaker […]

Bruce Brubaker

Recordings like the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, Bedroom Community, and Arabesque reach millions of listeners, and break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Billie Eilish, The Weeknd — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube are allowing music lovers to discover music they could not have found so easily before. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online. My performances occur in classical venues like the Philharmonie in Paris, the Barbican in London, at La Roque d’Anthéron, at festivals such as Barcelona’s Sónar and Nuits Sonores in Brussels, and such nightclubs as New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge. Read More…

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PianoMorphosis

Music is changing. Society's changing. Pianists, and piano music, and piano playing are changing too. That's PianoMorphosis. But we're not only reacting... From the piano -- at the piano, around the piano -- we are agents of change. We affect … [Read More...]

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BB on the web

“Glassforms” with Max Cooper at Sónar

“Glass Etude” on YouTube

demi-cadratin review of Brubaker solo concert at La Roque d’Anthéron

“Classical music dead? Nico Muhly proves it isn’t” — The Telegraph‘s Lucy Jones on my Drones & Piano EP

Bachtrack review of Brubaker all-Glass concert

“Brubaker recital proves eclectic, hypnotic, and timeless” — Harlow Robinson’s Boston Globe review of my Jordan Hall recital

“Simulcast” with Francesco Tristano on Arte

Bruce Brubaker hosts 4 weeks of “Hammered!” on WQXR — “Something Borrowed,” “Drone,” “Portal,” “The Raw and the Cooked”

“Onstage, a grand piano and an iPod” — David Weininger’s story with video by Dina Rudick

“Bruce Brubaker on Breaking Down Boundaries” — extensive audio interview at PittsburghNewMusicNet.com

“Heavy on the Ivories” — Andrea Shea’s story for WBUR about Bruce Brubaker’s performances and recording of “The Time Curve Preludes” by William Duckworth

“Feeding Those Young and Curious Listeners” — Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times on the first anniversary of the Poisson Rouge

“The Jewel in the Fish” — Harry Rolnick on Bruce Brubaker at the Poisson Rouge

“The Post-Postmodern Pianist” — Damian Da Costa profiles Bruce Brubaker in The New York Observer

Bruce Brubaker questioned at NewYorkPianist.net

“Finding the keys to the heart of Jordan Hall” — Joan Anderman in the Boston Globe on the search for a new concert grand piano

“Hearing and Seeing” — Philip Glass speaks with Bruce Brubaker and Jon Magnussen, Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study

Bruce Brubaker about Messiaen’s bird music, NPR, “Here and Now”

“I Hear America: Gunther Schuller at 80” — notes and programs for concert series, New England Conservatory, Harvard University, Boston Symphony Orchestra

“A Conversation That Never Occurred About the Irene Diamond Concert,” Juilliard Journal

Bruce Brubaker plays music by Alvin Curran at (le) Poisson Rouge

Bruce Brubaker

Recordings such the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, and Arabesque reach many listeners, and seem to break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Cardi B, Childish Gambino, Ariana Grande — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube are allowing music lovers to discover music they could not have encountered so easily in the past. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online: this year I play at the International Piano Festival at La Roque d’Anthéron, traditional concert venues in Los Angeles, and Boston — as well as nightclubs in Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Lyon, Geneva, and New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge.

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