David Long Plugs In

MEDIA RELEASE
Tuesday, 8 November 2016

DAVID LONG PLUGS IN

I'll Hum the First Few Bars (composed by David Long, 2016)

with David Long, Guitar
with David Downes, Visuals
with Jim Murphy, Mechatronics
with Orchestra Wellington

David Long has written a new piece for 16 of Orchestra Wellington's musicians who will accompany his performance of a textural solo for amplified guitar on December 3rd at Wellington's Michael Fowler Centre.

With Long's track record creating scores for film, television, documentaries and dance companies, not to mention his seminal role in New Zealand band The Muttonbirds, the audience can expect something daringly imaginative.
“I feel very lucky to get a chance to extend my writing and to play with the colours, textures and skills of the instruments and orchestral players which is outside my normal musical world," Long says.

"It’s exciting working with David and Jim. I feel like they are adding great depth and interest to my piece."

For the realisation of this score, David Downes and Jim Murphy took a digitised version of Long’s score as a listening guide to inspire the visuals elements of the performance.

Jim Murphy says his mechatronic inventions function something like a player piano, with moving parts pre-programmed to respond, with the help of a human operator, to the music.

The mechatronic operates a pair of wide glass dishes, tilting and rotating them to shift an array of substances and particles dropped onto them, in an effect somewhat like a rain-stick only more dynamic. The sound is picked up by microphones and amplified. The guitar soloist creates part of the mechantroncs’ performance, using moments when he has his hands free to drop more material onto the glass.

David Downes’ videos work directly with the score too, linking images to the sounds the orchestra will make. He has spent months collecting images of people and things suggested to him by the music and transformed them into black and white animations that react to and sometimes imitate the tilting and rotating actions of the animatronic.

ORCHESTRA WELLINGTON
SATURDAY 3 DECEMBER, 7:30PM
MICHAEL FOWLER CENTRE, WELLINGTON

David Long I’ll Hum the First Few Bars
Claire Cowan Violin Concerto “Stark”

Gustav Holst The Planets

David Long, Guitar
David Downes, Visuals
Jim Murphy, Mechatronics

Marc Taddei, Conductor
Amalia Hall, Violin
Orpheus Choir

/ENDS
www.orchestrawellington.co.nz

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