Lunch Concert 3A
Concert 3A offers a fascinating stage for the Steinway Spirio—the world’s most advanced self-playing piano system. In this session, the piano is taken far beyond its traditional role: it acts as an autonomous performer, a controller, and even an interface for human brain activity.
Program Overview
Elevator Pitch
Juan Vassallo
Chant
Yoonjae Choi
Mulholland Revisited
Heloise Garry
“Empathic Machines” for One Pianist’s Mind and Disklavier™
Masatsune Yoshio
Voici que la saison décline
Mikako Mizuno
Explode to Survive
Richard Scott
About the pieces & artists
Juan Vassallo: Elevator Pitch
Philosopher Hartmut Rosa suggests that our society is characterized by acceleration due to rapid technological advancements, leading to constant time shortages. As we adapt to quick updates via smartphones and social media, communication becomes faster and more fragmented, favoring brief, direct forms like the elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is a short summary speech meant to convey ideas or products within the duration of an elevator ride. It is aimed at being clear and persuasive to a wide audience.
In politics, new communication techniques exploit these brief, impactful messages, often oversimplifying complex issues and lacking depth. Such strategies have been criticized for manipulating public opinion and stirring emotions, leading to biased and divisive rhetoric that can aid authoritarian or intolerant movements.
The piece poses an artistic focus on these contemporary methods of communication -such as an elevator pitch- and the potential for manipulation of sound-bite content by political figures. The piece thus is a sardonic analogy to a political speech, which is portrayed here as empty of substance, and as a construct derived from a carefully crafted algorithmic rhetoric, and the sonification of spoken phrases. Additionally, nonsensical political speeches synthesized through commercial text-to-speech systems are used as sound material for the electronics.
About the artist
Juan Sebastián Vassallo is an Argentinian composer and live-electronics performer based in Bergen, Norway. He holds a Ph.D. in Artistic Research from the University of Bergen. His artistic research explores human–computer interaction in art creation, at the intersection of computer-assisted composition, artificial intelligence, algorithmic poetry, generative visuals, and live electronics.
His music has been performed internationally by ensembles and soloists including Projecto RED (Argentina), Quasar Saxophone Quartet (Canada), Hinge Quartet (USA), Vocal Ensemble Tabula Rasa (Norway), Edvard Grieg Kor (Norway), JÓR Saxophone Quartet (Scandinavia), Zone Experimental Basel (Switzerland), and Lucas Fels (Germany), among others.
His work has received multiple awards, including first prize at the AI-based composition contest at the IEEE Conference on Big Data (Washington, D.C.) for Oscillations (iii). Other distinctions include selections and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (Argentina), ISCM/Chengdu River Sun Prize (China), and several contemporary art competitions.
He has received international grants from UNESCO-Aschberg and the Organization of Ibero-American States (IBERMÚSICAS), supporting artistic residencies in the United States. His practice is strongly collaborative and interdisciplinary, and alongside his experimental work, he maintains an active career as a tango pianist and arranger.
Yoonjae Choi: Chant
Chant is a live electronic work that transforms the cello through vowel-based formant processing, creating a hybrid vocal–instrumental language reminiscent of primordial voice. As part of a broader research project on real-time live electronics formant synthesis, the piece explores how electronic modulation can expand instrumental identity and shape emotive, multi-voiced textures.
About the artist
Yoonjae Choi is a South Korean composer whose work explores the musical potential of extended tones and spectral qualities drawn from both traditional instruments and non-instrumental materials. His compositional practice focuses on integrating acoustic sound with live electronics, soundscapes, and computer-based technologies. He frequently collaborates across media arts and experimental music disciplines.
He studied with Richard Dudas at Hanyang University and with John Gibson and Chi Wang at Indiana University. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in composition at the University of North Texas, studying with Panayiotis Kokoras. His music and research have been featured at international conferences and festivals.
Heloise Garry: Mulholland Revisited
Mulholland Revisited is an interactive composition for Yamaha Disklavier / MIDI
keyboard and ChucK, integrating real-time interaction between acoustic and
electronic elements. By leveraging MIDI input, the piece enables the piano to
function as both a performer and a controller, triggering ChucK-generated sound
textures in response to live performance.
Inspired by a pivotal phone conversation in Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001), the
work explores the blurred boundary between dream and reality through a dynamic
interplay between piano-generated material and algorithmic sound synthesis. The
electronic elements emerge as an extension of the piano’s acoustic voice,
reinforcing the psychological tension that defines the narrative arc. An homage to
David Lynch, the piece mirrors his fascination with fractured identities and surreal
atmospheres, immersing the listener in a sonic landscape that expands the piano’s
traditional interface into new musical and narrative dimensions.
About the artist
Héloïse Garry is an artist working at the intersection of filmmaking, theater, and performance, exploring the aesthetics of totality across art forms. Her compositions reflect a deep interest in cross-cultural and linguistic experimentation, and sonic storytelling. Her work has been presented at ICMC, NIME, NYCEMF, ICAD, Audio Mostly, the Audio Engineering Society, and the Internet Archive. As a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, she researched the politics of independent Chinese cinema and the role of music in the films of Jia Zhangke. An artist-in-residence at Gray Area and the Mozilla Foundation in San Francisco, she has collaborated with IRCAM and the Columbia Computer Music Center, and explored the sonification of the universe under the mentorship of physicist Brian Greene. In September 2024, she joined Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), where she studies with Mark Applebaum, Paul DeMarinis, and Ge Wang. Héloïse holds bachelor’s degrees in Filmmaking, Economics, and Philosophy from Columbia University, Sciences Po, and Sorbonne University.
Masatsune Yoshio: Empathic Machines
What lies beyond the pianist’s technical skill — music in which body and mind are fully integrated?
In this work, a pianist’s brainwaves are sensed using the EMOTIV Insight device, and the data is processed in Max 9 to generate performance information that is transmitted and played by a Disklavier™ piano.
Through this body-extended expression, the resulting piano music — beyond human hand alone — becomes a speculative answer to the question posed above.
About the artist
Masatsune Yoshio (1972- ) was born in Kobe. He is a composer and Media Master No. 75. His specialty is the composition of fine art pieces using computers and the compositions are based on the creation of and research regarding algorithmic compositions, acoustic synthesizing, live electronics, and expression with information technologies. His electroacoustic pieces were performed within and outside of Japan. He is an associate professor at Showa University of Music.
Mikako Mizuno: Voici que la saison décline, for clarinet and electronics
The electronic part of this piece comprises sound files containing grains of different pitches and sizes, all of which are derived from clarinet performance. These grains are placed in the field by spat. program and diffused through a cube-shaped multi-channel system. The subscribed version is rendered into four channels. The solo clarinet is required to produce special tone colours using multiphonic techniques, breath tones, harmonic colour trills, etc. The subtle timbre of the instrument connects the minute changes in visual colours and the passing of time, which were depicted in a poem by Victor Hugo.
The title of this piece comes from one of Hugo’s poems. At the end of summer, the season seamlessly transitions to autumn. The bright blue sky turns grey, the birds shiver and the grass feels cold. I tried to create sounds that reflect these slight changes and delicate nuances.
The clarinet’s multiphonic sound is enhanced by harmonised breath tones. The harmonisation, realized by special signal processing, involves not only layered pitches, but also the filtering of noisy long breaths. In the performance, especially in the latter half of the piece, Max for Live is necessary to certify the effective interactive ensemble between the clarinet player and the electronic part, which must fulfil the notated musical ensemble. The instrumentalist can play the piece according to the usual musical notation, because some notated guides in the electronic part show the tempo and the nuance of phrase for the musician, which are often the case in the latter half of this piece. The instrumentalist is sometimes demanded to catch the electronic un-pitched noisy sounds during the fermata or the rest.
About the artist
Composer/Musicologist. Mainly active in Japan, her music has been heard in many places including France Germany,Austria, Hungary, Italy, Republic of Moldova, and international festivals and conferences such as ISEA, ISCM, EMS, Musicacoustica, WOCMAT, NIME, ICMC, NYCEMF. Her pieces range from orchestra, chamber music, vocal ensemble, traditional Japanese instruments (sho, koto, shakuhachi, no-flute, biwa etc.) to networked remote performance through ipv6.