Touch and Tone: Experimental music for iPad and Percussion in Boston

22 May '14

After I was in Toronto for the CHI2014 conference recently, I had the opportunity to head over to Boston to work with one of my favourite collaborators, Maria Finkelmeier. Maria worked her magic to set up a series of performances for us: six Frost Beat mini-concerts over two days in the Frost Ice Bar, a duo concert of my Nordlig Vinter suite at the Scandinavian Living Centre, and a trio gig of my iPad music with Jeremy Barnett, another Australian Percussionist/Computer-Musician.

This was a whirlwind trip and there’s still lots of media to process, but as a start, here’s some great pictures from our iPad concert at Outpost 186.

This great little venue in Cambridge feels like somebody’s living room, but it has a little PA system, plastic seats and theatre lights. Jeremy, Maria and I played four pieces for our small audience:

Study in Bowls, MetaLonsdale, Birds Nest which used our mini-percussion setup and my custom iPad apps and Jeremy’s solo Ableton Live piece, Wires.

After the concert, we invited the audience to come up to the stage and experiment with the iPad apps we used in the concert. It was great to show everybody how the apps were working and discuss my approach to computer/acoustic music-making with some fellow musicians and programmers!