Willful Devices
Telematic hDPHN / Carei Thomas Tribute
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Jazz pianist and composer Carei Thomas was a fixture of the Twin Cities music scene for nearly 50 years, known for sharing positivity, spirituality, and creativity with his collaborators and listeners. He passed away last month at age 81. Zeitgeist was blessed to have collaborated with Thomas many times throughout the years. Many of Carei's friends and collaborators have shared remembrances here.
As a tribute to Carei and his music, Willful Devices has adapted their new show, HDPHN, as a telematic performance featuring music by Carei Thomas, plus new music and adapted work from the original HDPHN concert. The event will be streamed live from Studio Z on Facebook Live. Donations from livestream viewers will be accepted to support the archiving of the music and work of Carei Thomas as a way to carry on his legacy and make his work available to others. Donations can be made in advance here or during the livestream. HDPHN premiered in February and seems to be designed for an audience distributed around the world and (ideally) listening on headphones. Scott Miller (Kyma) and Pat O’Keefe (Clarinet) have been experimenting with deploying their interactive programming across the internet from St. Paul to Otsego, MN. HDPHN presents the audience with a new way to experience live electro-acoustic music performance, similar to the “silent disco.” HDPHN imagines a shared audience experience dependent on the use of a technology, headphones, which is usually regarded as isolating. The music is performed live, but instead of being amplified through a set of speakers in the room, all sounds (both acoustic and electric) are delivered to the audience via headphones. Processed sound is also returned to the clarinet via analog ‘talk box,’ which is piped through the clarinet to be filtered by the instrument and amplified by the microphones, creating a feedback loop that is further manipulated by Pat on the clarinet. The use of headphones allows for a live concert of music that involves sounds that are often impossible to hear without amplification, and also for an extremely precise presentation of sound moving in space.
HDPHN was created and is performed by Willful Devices: Pat O'Keefe (bass clarinet, Bb clarinet) and Scott L. Miller (Kyma, Keyboard). It was developed while in residence at Sparta Sound, a ‘Rock ‘n Roll Bed and Breakfast’ up on the Iron Range of Minnesota, owned and run by musician and studio engineer, Rich Mattson. The residency was funded by the McKnight Foundation, in support of Miller’s 2018 McKnight Composer Fellowship. Willful Devices is an electroacoustic avant-improv duo, born of the collaboration between composer/computer musician Scott Miller and clarinetist/bass clarinetist Pat O’Keefe. Their name refers to the willful nature of the tools they manipulate to produce sound, because despite their best efforts, these devices are never fully under their control. Willful Devices celebrates this, since within this unpredictability lies the potential for unimagined sonic discovery. Willful Devices develops most of their music during that unique time we all know as play, and the results are a vital, dynamic product of the connection between Scott and Pat and their unique musical identities.
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