If you have ever wondered what a nose flute sounds like, seize your chance to find out at tonight's Festival of New Musics. At 8 p.m. in Spaulding Auditorium, the Festival will feature a multimedia mix of music, dance and video. The performance promises to provide "new insights into the marriage of music and technology," according to the Hopkins Center's program guide.
The Festival is an annual event that showcases new electronic and instrumental music, most of it composed by Dartmouth faculty and students. Music Professor and Festival organizer Larry Polansky said the program is a chance "to hear student pieces presented professionally."
This year's Festival features a mix of electronic and instrumental music with a few surprises thrown in. Student composer Empi Esguerra '97 describes the music as "all over the map."
Esguerra's piece is entitled "The Gnome Songs." The only undergraduate featured in the program, Esguerra will play the nose flute, an indigenous Filipino instrument made of bamboo, along with a taped accompaniment of synthesized voices and indigenous Filipino music.
Some of the compositions stretch the traditional definition of music, such as the computer-composed work by David Feldman, a math professor at the University of New Hampshire. This piece for solo electric guitar, entitled "... still plenty of good music ...," is dedicated to Polansky, who will be performing it. The work was generated by a computer program that Feldman wrote.
Professor Jon Appleton's composition, "Nihon No Omide (Japanese Memories)" will have its world premiere tonight. The piece consists of solo violin music written in honor of his friends in Japan.
The program will also feature the world premiere and thesis of graduate student in Electro-Acoustic Music Albina Stoianova's text-sound composition, "The Daemon," based on the poem by Lermontov. A dance by choreographer Randall Scott accompanies the piece.
Another Electro-acoustic Music graduate student, Kevin Parks, will present his master's thesis tonight. Parks' piece, "Crow's-Eye View No. X," is based on poems by the Korean modernist Yi Sang.
