The Spring 2011 Virginia Tech Linux Laptop Orchestra (L2Ork) concert event took place this past Saturday, April 9th. Following a well-received forty five minute program with the Boys and Girls Club Laptop Orchestra at the Dumas Center in Roanoke, VA, on Friday, April 8th, this concert was a good balance of confidence and professionalism, and an inviting and informal atmosphere. The children's program, featuring the Boys and Girls Club from the Roanoke Academy of Math and Science, started at 7pm. Since I had been working with the boys and girls, instructing and conducting them twice a week for the past two months, this program was my primary concern. And I was not disappointed! The kids performed well under pressure, better than they had performed at any rehearsal. Nothing like a hall full of expectant parents to make kids buckle down and focus. They performed two pieces that I had created for them, one being a simple arrangement of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and the other a piece based on rhythmic patterns using their voice as an instrument sample within the Renoise sequencer/DAW. The boys and girls were joined on both these pieces by guest artist Ron Coulter, who laid down some sweet drum beats to accompany the kids. The boys and girls also performed two pieces with the L2Ork ensemble: Citadel, the staple L2Ork ensemble piece, featuring soprano vocalist Aurora Martin; and Rain, a new piece by Ico Bukvic that premiered at the event.
Once the kids program was over and they had performed their last piece to open the 8 o'clock concert, I was free--with the exception of helping reset the stage at intermission-- to sit back and enjoy the rest of the event, a luxury I had not been able to partake of throughout my years as a Music Technology student at Virginia Tech. The pieces by the other guest artists were very good. Dave Phillips played three tape pieces, all composed with AV Synthesis; Peter Kirn showcased the power of libpd, the PureData embeddable library, in Processing; and Brad Garton improvised with a Manta board and iPhone, and read from his Book of Dreams. Additionally, L2Ork premiered two pieces, the aforementioned Rain, and Serene, also by Ico Bukvic, which incorporated Taiji movement in the choreography of the ensemble, and performed their improvisational glitch piece, 13, with Ron Coulter as percussion soloist.
But that's not all! Not only was there a great concert event with enjoyable music, but each of the guest artists gave an hour long presentation during their time at Virginia Tech. Dave Phillips showed off some new advancements in Linux audio, such as Ardour 3 with its new MIDI note editor, and MixBus, Harrison consoles' version of the Ardour DAW. He also showed off AV Synthesis, a composition program that I never knew existed but am now looking forward to delving into, which uses Csound to generate ambient audio textures and OpenGL to render accompanying visuals. Peter Kirn showed how libpd can be imported into a Processing sketch to interface with and control a PureData audio patch. (There will be a tutorial post coming shortly showing how I managed to get lidpd built and working as a custom library with Processing for anyone who is interested.) Brad Garton then took us on a tour down his compositional memory lane, playing many examples of his past algorithmic compositions and the processes he used to create them, as well as demonstrating his "music book" application. This past weekend has been one of the best concert experiences I've ever had. Very inspiring, and leaves me very excited to start grad school at UC Irvine in the fall.
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