remember that the first computer Princeton had was a giant one-megabyte machine that priced at about $15 million,” said Paul Lansky, visiting distinguished composer at the University of Utah. Now, 40-some years later, one can buy a ZIP disk that holds 100 MB of memory for less than $10. Furthermore, a CD-R or CD-RW that costs less than two bucks allows up to 700 MB of memory.

There couldn’t have been better representatives of the historical connection between technology and electronic music than this year’s Abravanel Visiting Distinguished Composers, namely Olly Wilson, Paul Lansky and Jonathan Harvey, who appeared on Sept. 22 and 23. Although their backgrounds are diverse, their commonality—the influence of electronics in their music—binds them together as the generation that fascinated and drooled over the sine wave.

The two dates provided a great opportunity for the composers to both lecture and present their widely diverse compositions that utilize the electronic medium. Tuesday night was the finale to a great immersion into the world electronic.

Held at the Edgar J. Thompson Chamber Hall in David Gardner Hall on the U campus, the concert showcased a spectrum of electronic sounds, ranging from computer-altered acoustic sounds to the proverbial blips and pops of early electronic tape music to the incorporation of live electronics with live instruments.

The concert began with Paul Lansky’s piece called “Pattern’s Patterns.” Not only is the title a play on words, but the whole piece is a play on your mind. You may be familiar with Lansky without even knowing it. One of his first electronic pieces was sampled by Radiohead and used on Kid A‘s “Idioteque.”

The sample involves a pre-recorded female voice stating various letters in the alphabet with a male voice counting. This piece calls into question what parameters one uses to define music. Although there was an organ-like pad throughout the piece amid the chattering voices, the engaging sounds required an actively listening ear. And just at that moment when you think you have discovered a pattern, the pattern changes.

Lansky’s other piece, “Ride,” premiered through a huge stack of six-foot by four-foot speakers done in eight channels at Alice Tully Hall in New York City three years ago. Using traffic sounds that Lansky filtered to obscure the real sounds, the performance of “Ride” was a journey of sound that left the whole audience in awe. Incidentally, Lansky himself indicated that the Salt Lake City debut was “Ride’s” second-best performance, after the huge premiere.

Olly Wilson’s music included “Echoes” for clarinet and tape and “Sometimes” for tenor and tape. The electronic sounds were the proverbial screeches and blurs that were often used in the 1970s, when electronic music really came into its own. Although the performances by Jaren Hinckley (clarinet) and Todd Miller (tenor) were much to be admired, the music itself was at times overindulgent and dramatically ridiculous.

Yet Wilson’s pieces were some of the first to combine live performers with electronics. What was heard was incredible from a historical context, though not so much without that added perspective.

The music of Jonathan Harvey is yet to be reckoned with in the United States. Harvey received most of his training in England and France. Pierre Boulez once invited Harvey to study at France’s premier electronic institution, IRCAM (Institute de Recherché et Coordination Acoustique/Musique).

Included on the program were two earlier works by Harvey. For example, “Ricercare (pronounced REE-CHUR-CAR-AY), una melodia” for solo cello and live electronics was an interesting example of using delays to thicken the sound of a solo instrument. Played by Noriko Kishi of CanyonLands, a contemporary music ensemble based at the U, the music bounced from the cello into the hall and out of the speakers. At times the sound was so dense and complex it was hard to distinguish between what was happening live and what was being played over the speakers. It was reminiscent of a person with multiple personalities.

“The Riot” was indeed what its title purports. Played by other CanyonLands players—Heather Conner, piano, Carlton Vickers, flute and piccolo and Jaren Hinckley, bass clarinet—“The Riot” ebbed and flowed as uninhibited and controlled as an electronic piece. Yet there were no electronics. This indeed poses the irony found within Harvey’s music—organic music that is created by stiff control. Indeed, the influence of earlier electronic pieces played a significant role in creating this incredible and most fitting concluding work of the concert.

Overall, the concert ran the gamut of new and old developments in the world of electronic art music. Yet the underlying feature of the life work of these composers is their constant pursuit of keeping up with technology without sacrificing their creative abilities for something easier on the public’s ears. While that old $15 million computer at Princeton collects dust, these composers continue to invent and reinvent themselves through electronic music.

christian@red-mag.com