Those who either attended guitarist Giacomo Fiore’s recital in the Old First Concerts series at Old First Church at the beginning of this month or read my account of his program may already know about the uniquely imaginative approach that Lanier Sammons is taking to composition. That approach is based on the content of his doctoral dissertation entitled Audience Interactivity and the Concert Hall Audience, for which he received his Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies from the University of Virginia in May of 2012. Fiore performed “Pollical Variations,” in which what he played was determined by real-time voting from the audience, using a laptop to translate the results of the vote into a display of the score from which he would perform.
Next week Sammons will present a more comprehensive program of compositions based on this thesis research at the new Center for New Music. This will include an encore presentation of “Pollical Variations,” again executed by Fiore, along with performances by bassoonist Dana Jessen, saxophonist Michael Straus, and oboist Kyle Bruckmann. Like “Pollical Variations,” all of Sammons’ scores are event-based; but the performances range from audience improvisation to a work for computer-generated sound resulting from data produced by audience-directed sensors.
This concert will be hosted by the Center for New Music, located at 55 Taylor Street, just below the southwest corner of Turk Street. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. this Tuesday, March 19. There will be no charge for admission.
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