"The first thing about the Electro New Music Ensemble," Professor Paul Lehrman said, "is that it doesn't really exist." This Friday's concert is something of an experiment. The Tufts Electronic Music Ensemble (EME), directed by Lehrman, and the Tufts New Music Ensemble (NME), directed by Professor Donald Berman, will join forces to perform a variety of new works from off and on the Hill.
The two ensembles first played together during Parent's Weekend last October. According to Lehrman, the concert "worked out very well." This time around, however, the Electro New Music Ensemble will have a different repertoire.
"With this concert we're not an ensemble so much as we're playing a bunch of projects done by students," Lehrman said. Two of these projects include students' electronically composed film scores. In two other pieces, students will improvise with electronic instruments.
One of show's most unusual pieces is sure to be "Imaginary Dialogues," which Lehrman and graduate student Philip Acimovic will perform using Wii controllers. The controllers send signals through Blue Tooth, and have been set up to communicate with a computer that interprets the data so it can control music software.
The electronic pieces will be interspersed with NME performances. One of NME's highlights will be the premiere of "Bad Old Songs," commissioned by Tufts alum Tom Swafford (LA '95).
The concert's last piece will be a video recording of a robotic orchestra playing "Ballet Mécanique" at the National Gallery of Art. The film will be shown in surround sound. Lehrman believes that the fusion of electronics and music is improving rapidly, citing "Guitar Hero" as an example. EME is helping this progression.
"We like to think of this as the future of musical instruments," Lehrman said, "We're just thinking, okay, what are the technologies out there and how can we apply them to music?"
The Electro New Music Ensemble will perform at 8 p.m. this Friday, April 25 in Distler Performance Hall. The concert is free and open to the public.
