Violent Dreams

Hans Leeuw, and Diemo Schwarz

Music Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

• Year: 2012
• Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.

Abstract:

Program notes: Two typical NIME related inventions meet in this performance. IRCAM based Diemo Schwarz and HKU lecturer and Electrumpet player Hans Leeuw met at STEIM in 2010. The extreme sound possibilities of the sensor driven Electrumpet combine wonderfully with the corpus based techniques in CataRT. Both Diemo and Hans play their self-invented instruments for a number of years in which they have done several iterations / extensions and built a lot of performance experience. This experience pays off in the expressive capabilities of both performers making this a concert that goes far beyond an extended demonstration of new instruments. In Violent Dreams, Hans's manipulated sounds are recorded in CataRT, from which Diemo chooses specific sonic characters and evolutions via gestural controllers, that are played back and transformed by CataRT, challenging Hans to come up with more extreme sounds surpassing his own originals. Thus we get an interesting and challenging improvisation battle between two players that both fully master their instrument. Composer(s) Credits: Instrumentalist(s) Credits: Hans Leeuw (Electrumpet), Diemo Schwarz (CataRT, gestural controllers) Artist(s) Biography: Hans Leeuw is recognized as one of Hollands top players composers and bandleaders in the Jazz and improvised music scene even before he started to use electronics and designed his own Electrumpet. He is most noted as the bandleader of the Dutch formation Tetzepi, a 14 piece Big Band. Tetzepi exists for 15 years and is structurally funded by Dutch government. Next to his activities as a performer Hans teaches at the Utrecht school for the arts at the Music Technology department and at the faculty Industrial Design of the Technical University Eindhoven where he coaches projects on the design of new musical instruments. In 2008 he designed the Electrumpet, a hybrid electroacoustic instrument that differs from similar design in that it takes the trumpet players normal playing position and expression in account thus creating an instrument that combines acoustic and electronic expression seamlessly. (see `the electrumpet, additions and revisions') Diemo Schwarz is a researcher and developer at Ircam, composer of electronic music, and musician on drums and laptop. He holds a PhD in computer science applied to music for his research on corpus-based concatenative musical sound synthesis. His compositions and live performances, under the name of his solo project Mean Time Between Failure, or improvising with musicians such as Frédéric Blondy, Victoria Johnson, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Etienne Brunet, Luka Juhart, George Lewis, Evan Parker, explore the possibilities of corpus-based concatenative synthesis to re-contextualise any sound source by rearranging sound units into a new musical framework using interactive navigation through a sound space, controlled by gestural input devices. His research work includes improving interaction between musician and computer, and exploiting large masses of sound for interactive real-time sound synthesis, collaborating with composers such as Philippe Manoury, Dai Fujikura, Stefano Gervasoni, Aaron Einbond, Sam Britton. Concert Venue and Time: Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, Monday May 21, 9:00pm

Citation:

BibTeX Entry:

  @incollection{nime2012-music-LeeuwSchwarz2012,
 abstract = {Program notes:

Two typical NIME related inventions meet in this performance. IRCAM based Diemo Schwarz and HKU lecturer and Electrumpet player Hans Leeuw met at STEIM in 2010. The extreme sound possibilities of the sensor driven Electrumpet combine wonderfully with the corpus based techniques in CataRT. Both Diemo and Hans play their self-invented instruments for a number of years in which they have done several iterations / extensions and built a lot of performance experience. This experience pays off in the expressive capabilities of both performers making this a concert that goes far beyond an extended demonstration of new instruments. In \emph{Violent Dreams}, Hans's manipulated sounds are recorded in CataRT, from which Diemo chooses specific sonic characters and evolutions via gestural controllers, that are played back and transformed by CataRT, challenging Hans to come up with more extreme sounds surpassing his own originals. Thus we get an interesting and challenging improvisation battle between two players that both fully master their instrument.
Composer(s) Credits:

Instrumentalist(s) Credits:

Hans Leeuw (Electrumpet), Diemo Schwarz (CataRT, gestural controllers)

Artist(s) Biography:

Hans Leeuw is recognized as one of Hollands top players composers and bandleaders in the Jazz and improvised music scene even before he started to use electronics and designed his own Electrumpet. He is most noted as the bandleader of the Dutch formation Tetzepi, a 14 piece Big Band. Tetzepi exists for 15 years and is structurally funded by Dutch government.
Next to his activities as a performer Hans teaches at the Utrecht school for the arts at the Music Technology department and at the faculty Industrial Design of the Technical University Eindhoven where he coaches projects on the design of new musical instruments.
In 2008 he designed the Electrumpet, a hybrid electroacoustic instrument that differs from similar design in that it takes the trumpet players normal playing position and expression in account thus creating an instrument that combines acoustic and electronic expression seamlessly. (see `the electrumpet, additions and revisions')

Diemo Schwarz is a researcher and developer at Ircam, composer of electronic music, and musician on drums and laptop.  He holds a PhD in computer science applied to music for his research on corpus-based concatenative musical sound synthesis.
His compositions and live performances, under the name of his solo project Mean Time Between Failure, or improvising with musicians such as Fr\'{e}d\'{e}ric Blondy, Victoria Johnson, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Etienne Brunet, Luka Juhart, George Lewis, Evan Parker, explore the possibilities of corpus-based concatenative synthesis to re-contextualise any sound source by rearranging sound units into a new musical framework using interactive navigation through a sound space, controlled by gestural input devices.
His research work includes improving interaction between musician and computer, and exploiting large masses of sound for interactive real-time sound synthesis, collaborating with composers such as Philippe Manoury, Dai Fujikura, Stefano Gervasoni, Aaron Einbond, Sam Britton.

Concert Venue and Time: Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, Monday May 21, 9:00pm},
 address = {Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.},
 author = {Hans Leeuw and Diemo Schwarz},
 booktitle = {Music Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 day = {21-23},
 editor = {Georg Essl and Brent Gillespie and Michael Gurevich and Sile O'Modhrain},
 month = {May},
 publisher = {Electrical Engineering \& Computer Science and Performing Arts Technology, University of Michigan},
 title = {Violent Dreams},
 year = {2012}
}