Tod’s third post on the I Hear Lucerne blog is up! He brings you inside his journey to explore the Swiss city of Lucerne. From his visit, several themes begin to emerge. Tod also describes an extraordinary workshop involving the people of Lucerne and three very different artists:
That same afternoon, we presented a workshop at the KKL to demonstrate howEine Sinfornie fûr Luzern is developing. I reminded the audience of the basic premise for the project, demonstrated the new Höre Luzern / Hear Lucernemobile app that makes it easy to record and share sounds from the city, and played some of my favorite sounds – from cows to yodels to ship horns to fountains – that have been contributed so far. Then we tried an experiment, to see if we could “translate” real sounds from the city into “music.” Since the Piano Festival was in session, I asked that we find three open-minded and creative pianists from different musical backgrounds to participate. We were extremely fortunate to be able to work with Anita Schaufelberger, Michael Mahnig, and Leo Tardin. They couldn’t have been more wonderful to work with. For each of them, I played one of three “sound dreamscapes” I had prepared based on a certain type of sonic material from Lucerne: Water, Bells and Voices respectively. After we – myself, the pianists and the assembled audience – listened to each of the ca. 1-minute collages, I asked one of the pianists to reinterpret the recorded sounds and to create the same sound and feel on the acoustic piano.
You can read the full blog post and watch workshop video footage here.
Opera of the Future 