Morton Subotnick @ Lincoln Center

[chysn]

http://www.lincolncenter.org/lc-festival/show/subotnick

Tickets went on sale today. I've got mine! Now I just have to find my way to New York City...

[chysn]

Well, I'm heading for the concert hall now. I'll let you know how it was!

[chysn]

I'm really glad I made the trip. Thanks to buying my ticket the day they went on sale, I was seated in the first row, about five feet behind Subotnick. An iPhone shot of his performance rig is attached. I took this shot from my seat, without having to zoom in.

Crowds and Power was a powerful piece. Joan La Barbara sang the vocal part. The synthesizer part matched her vocals in fascinating ways. I'm not sure whether her voice was a modulation source, or whether Subotnick was explicitly playing along. I know that he's employed "voice as modulation source" techniques before, so it would be interesting to find out how this effect was done.

Strangely, the last few minutes of Crowds and Power ended with the last few minutes of A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur, but with the addition of a part for La Barbara.

The performance of Silver Apples of the Moon was nice, as well. It was a bit different than on the original album version, but all of the familiar sounds and rhythms were there.

Can anyone identify the three pieces of equipment surrounding the MacBook? The silver thing to the left, the white thing in the middle, and the black thing to the right, in front of the 222e?

[megamarkd]

Cheers for that little review, sounds as thought it was a good night!
As to the three piece of kit, the white one in front of the keyboard looks like it could be one of those Korg mini controllers?

[chysn]

Cheers for that little review, sounds as thought it was a good night!
As to the three piece of kit, the white one in front of the keyboard looks like it could be one of those Korg mini controllers?

Yes, thanks! It looks like that's a Korg NanoKONTROL2. And then, while looking that up, I found that the black thing in front of the 222e looks like a NanoKONTROL Studio, and then what looks like a NanoKEY behind that. He uses Ableton during performance, so the NanoKONTROL stuff makes a lot of sense.

[Paul Dither]

Thanks for the report!

I first thought the silver thing to the left was a Tenori-on, but its edges look a tad too sharp and it has pads. Maybe it's just a launch pad like on the photo of Subotnick's desk below.

[chysn]

I first thought the silver thing to the left was a Tenori-on, but its edges look a tad too sharp and it has pads. Maybe it's just a launch pad like on the photo of Subotnick's desk below.

Yes, that looks like Novation Launch Pad. It's possible that it looks silver in the photo because of reflected light. Thanks for the ID help, everyone! I didn't want to get too close to Subotnick's stuff, so I couldn't see what everything was.

The Korg NanoKONTROL2 looks kind of awesome. Mousing around the screen in a DAW makes the experience kind of dreary, and this seems like a cheap way to fix that.