Piano Circus

Professor Rush’s anti-piano recital, “Piano Circus” was one of the best shows ever performed in the Davis Technology Suite. The recital allowed Rush to show off his virtuosity in piano performance while enhancing the meaning of many of the songs. His decision to combine random parts of the 10 songs being performed with his live play added depth, dissonance, and perspective to each and every song. On top of that, the constant cycle of the sum of music being randomly played throughout the entire concert and in between each piece connected each current performance to every song on the set list. This made the entire 10 song set list one, unified performance rather than a concert.

Professor Rush has consistently critiqued the academic institution’s massive push to keep music before the 20^th century alive in its students. He is constantly finding ways to question the common practices, courses, and teaching in this school of music. He pushes for opportunities for student to receive education on more modern music; from Miles Davis, to Stevie Wonder and David Bowie, Professor Rush often teaches us as students to study the artist who have had a direct impact on music today and not one-hundred and fifty years ago. He believes studying a broad variety of music and artists will give students a better sense of music happening outside the walls of academia and will furthermore help us as music students transition into making a living off our skills. This concert is a great example of Rush taking a traditional concept in classical music and flipping it on its head into something new, modern, and diverse; the way he used the technology helped enhance those concepts even more.

The diversity comes from Rush’s song selection. Rather than choosing the best of Sergei Rachmaninoff to off his virtuosity as a piano player, Rush chose singer-songwriter songs like Stevie Wonder’s If it’s Magic and Flower’s Grave by Tom Waits.  He chose to celebrate the differences in art-forms by playing songs that are completely contrasting in sound back to back. That concept alone was clear; however, his choice to playback the contrasting songs a midst his performance consistently reminded the audience of the contrasts of songs, and allowed us to aurally relate each song to one another repeatedly. This made us as a listener view every song with a comparative mindset, rather than a simple observing ear. And as the listener compared each song to the next, the listener also compared each song to the first song, the second, and so forth—all while appreciating Rush’s virtuosity—and ultimately had so much to consume in his or her mind that the entire showed was washed together. The listener let go of hearing every note and just appreciate the textures, contrasts, concepts, and comparisons thrown at him. “Piano Circus” found a way through technology to combine ten entirely separate concepts into one complete thought.

Anti-piano recital

One of the compelling effects of Stephen Rush’s “anti-piano recital” was to shape the listening patterns of the audience. In this performance, the performer played pieces live in a random order while pre-recorded versions played back at various volumes in different speakers in a different random order. As stated by the program notes, depending on how the live and playback sounds coincided, three major effects were possible:
• Opposition, where two very different types of music collided, in amusing or maybe annoying ways) • Complementarity, where the same or similar pieces play through the speakers)
 • Displacement, where a piece that has already been played through one format (live or playback) plays through the other, offering a sort of flashback

Initially, I found it easiest to identify and engage with moments of complementarity. Perhaps this is because many, though not all, of the pieces were very avant-garde, consisting of free improvisation, twelve-tone music, and other melodic and harmonic techniques that defied the ear as it is. Thus, “collisions” (at least with my musical sensibilities, which are doubtless considerably less developed than Stephen Rush’s or other music faculty and such in the audience) were already inevitable, while moments of “musical agreement” stood out.

Over the course of the concert, however, it became easier to appreciate moments of opposition as well. This was perhaps most apparent when two colliding tonal pieces played together. For example, the two pieces with vocals, “Flower’s Grave” by Waits/Brennan and “If It’s Magic” by Stevie Wonder, would not only be in opposition because they had identifiably different lyrics but also because they were a half step apart in key. Even for pieces like the Xenakis and Stockhausen, I felt I was able to pick out moments where they would especially collide with music on the other form of media. Of course, audience cues helped--I appreciated the moments where the audience laughed quietly, which happened from time to time on account of all three of these effects. Indeed, we do not listen to music (or experience any art, or anything really) in a vacuum, but rather if we experience it collectively this collective experience shapes our individual perception.

 By design, however, the collective experience was not the same for each person. The playback did not play back in all speakers equally, but rather would play back only from certain speakers, moving around the room in no discernible pattern. Furthermore, as the volume would be randomized, sometimes the music coming from the speaker would be rather soft. This means that people on the other side of the room might barely hear the playback at times, even if people sitting close to the speaker might be able to hear it better. This meant that we did not experience all moments equally or at the same time. Sometimes, for example, I would hear people in the audience laugh before I realized what was going on. Often that was because they could simply hear something I could not--and the reverse is true; doubtless I too heard moments that they did not. Thus, one effect of the randomization of the playback was that it brought about differences in our experiences of the concert: we may have had a collective experience, but not a uniform one.

Piano Circus Blog Post

by Ben Roberts

Professor Stephen Rush’s performance, Piano Circus, was an intriguing and stimulating experience to enjoy. By rethinking the way an audience can experience a piano recital, Rush was able to augment our perceptions and encounters of the pieces played. Starting with the idea of the way we remember a “normal” concert in snippets of time and musical ideas, he was able to flesh it out in a way that brings the very act of remembrance to the real-time performance itself. Using short, randomly played sections of prerecorded pieces played over loudspeakers, he was able to compliment and contrast the performance, with the same performance pieces. Arguing that piano recitals are “stupid,” Professor Rush sets out to challenge the idea of them, as well as our understanding of, experience of, and comfort with them.

The technology in this performance was vital in realizing its conception. In collaboration with Professor Leith Campbell, Rush created a MAX patch that would select each prerecorded sample at random and play it through the speakers of the studio. The patch would also pan the samples throughout the speaker array. This meant that each person in the audience had a different experience. For example, if you were sitting on one side of the piano, and the sample was playing out of the speakers on the opposite end, you were most likely unable to hear that sample, therefore being endowed with a different experience. Without a patch that did these actions flawlessly, and continuously, this type of performance and effectiveness would not be possible. Also, the volume of these samples was extremely important. Rush playing piano was the loudest sonority in the room, which meant you were able to tell exactly what piece he was playing, and follow it fairly well. The samples however, were played at a slightly ducked volume, which left the audience members hearing it as if it was inside their own head, juxtaposing what Rush was playing live. As the samples moved from speaker to speaker, the perceived loudness changed and shifted, creating a very interesting and never-stagnant performance experience.

Personally, I truly enjoyed this show. The parts that caught my interest the most, where when samples naturally and unexpectedly complimented the pieces being played. For example, at one moment during the performance, Professor Rush began the second verse of a song, and at that exact moment, the prerecorded sample of the very same song began to play the first verse. They lined up in a way that sounded like a call and response. Another example is when the atonal sonorities of the experimental pieces complimented one another, which in theory should never happened, but happened quite a few times. These wonderful “awe-inspiring” moments, and others like it, where what made the performance the spectacle that it was.

Professors Stephen Rush and Leith Campbell where able to create a performance that challenged the typical ideas of recitals and concerts, while at the same time, driving the very experience of attending and remembering them into the conceptual nature of the recital itself.