Program Notes

Composing and Cocktails

Loops and rhythms composed by Jakub Ciupinski. Music "waiters" (composer Jakub Ciupinksi and conductor Andrew Cyr) will greet you with iPhones that serve as a real-time composition system, networking wirelessly to Metropolis Ensemble musicians on laptops. Via intuitive graphics on the touch screens, audience members control and manipulate the musical notation while the musicians perform live, creating an always unique composition and musical soundscape.

How will this work? Composer Jakub Ciupinski explains:

"The process of interacting with the audience will be similar to how the waiter interacts with restaurant guests. The composer and conductor can suggest certain choices from the "menu" of melodies, textures, dynamics, and the audience can choose whatever they would like to hear from the live musicians in any given moment. The iPhone will serve as a remote control of the real-time composition system, instantly affecting musical notation displayed on the musicians laptops."

Download the music menu (PDF)...

Meet Jakub Ciupinski:



Strings and Speakers

Listen to a conversation with Jakub and Andrew about Morning Tale, and experience a demonstration that extends the piano through electronics.

MORNING TALE - for piano and electronics
Featuring Jenny Lin on piano. The style of this music is influenced by minimalism, pointillism, as well as pop music. More from Jakub:

"The goal was to use electronics as an extension of the piano's capabilities rather than as a separate medium. An electronic layer, derived from piano sounds, will be projected with speakers placed inside the instrument to achieve greater blend with natural acoustic sounds in addition to haunting echoes and effects."

Here's the second movement of Morning Tale, performed by Jenny Lin at Metropolis Ensemble's Glimpses on May 6, 2009:



The Sublime Groove

Listen to a conversation with Jakub and Andrew about experimental pop and high art, specifically Street Prayer, and experience a demonstration about external elements and the new generation.

STREET PRAYER - for three flutes, three celli, piano, and electronics (World Premiere)
This music will be a unique blend of classical minimalism and non-classical electronica. Jakub elaborates:

"Grooves unfolding gradually with electronic loops will reach a spectacular climax following a hypnotic crescendo. The piece is will explore the possibility of merging contemporary high art music with experimental pop to create a unified, genuine and consistently independent new style.

From the classical style, I keep the traditional instruments, technique of composing, and certain motives characteristic of classical music, such as the way I think about form and harmony and what is probably the most important - the refined and very careful process thinking conceptually about a musical composition.

From pop music I am taking the idea of groove maintained over a longer period of time, introducing certain syncopated rhythms and loop-based electronics."

More from Jakub about Septet:



Music from Air

Listen to a conversation with Jakub and Andrew about unifying composition and performance, and experience a demonstration from drum bass to dance music.

Take a journey through electronica. This post-concert performance will serve as the background for the after-party. Using a system composer Jakub Ciupinski created built out of two theremins and a laptop, he will convey movements of hands in the air into electronic sounds and rhythms.

Here's a demo of Jakub's gesture-controlled system: