Disquiet

The first two syllables in “Conloninpurple,” the name of Trimpin‘s current installation at the Ojai Valley Museum in California, are indeed in reference to composer Conlon Nancarrow. The late Nancarrow is best known for having used the player piano to write music largely unplayable by human hands. Trimpin, a Seattle-based musician/inventor whose work has gotten attention from the New Yorker in the past year, created a computer-propelled musical instrument that fills a room. According to the museum’s website, “It consists of sixty sounders covering five octaves. Each sounder is driven by an electrical solenoid, which, when triggered, strikes a block of wood of a given length. The note given off is naturally amplified and directed by a tuned, resonant tube of anodized aluminum. Each pipe consists of an inner and outer sleeve, allowing the length to be adjusted as the inner sleeve slides in or out of the other.” One sample audio recording is available for download (MP3), a kind of Fourth World calypso. More info at ojaivalleymuseum.org, the website of the museum where the piece will remain until August 31. (Via musicthing.blogspot.com.)

By Marc Weidenbaum