Steel & Bamboo by Robert Dick, Steve Gorn (review)

ing is controlled, effectively building the piece in long-breathed phrases, while the computer creates an amorphous cloud of closely spaced clusters around the sparse melodic patterns fed in by Freedman. The manner in which the piece breathes and builds from the chiaroscuro to the highest register by its end is particularly memorable. If anything , the piece could have gone on a little longer-the ending seems abruptly cut off. Nonetheless, the work presents an appropriate ending to the disc as a whole. Taken as a whole, this CD offers a fascinating and provocative collection of pieces. The performers contribute substantially to its quality, both through their playing and their intelligent musical interaction with the computer. Each performer involves him- or herself fully in forging a new kind of socio-musical relationship with Scheidt's interactive software. One is hard- pressed to imagine more committed, open-minded partners in such an enterprise. Scheidt has surrounded himself with musicians who enter into this interactive world with passion , invention, virtuosity and purpose. Scheidt himself continues to spearhead fascinating research in interactive music systems involving human performers and computer software. He is currently affiliated with the Computed Art Workshop at Simon Fraser University's Contemporary Arts Summer Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia , which intensively explores software as a creative medium. Some of his ongoing projects involve Yamaha Disklavier technology and interactive software such as Big Piano, with U.S. composer Robert Kyr, and Machine/ Mind/Music, with Canadian composers such as David Eagle, Century and Robert , realized at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, Canada. In these projects, the composer/pianist creates his or her own composition within a musical environment determined by the software. One looks forward to future CD projects from Scheidt and to the possibility of more general distribution of his software. STEEL & BAMBOO by Robert Dick and Steve Gorn. 0.0. Discs, Bridgeport, CT, U.S.A., 1993. Compact disc 12. Reviewed by Matt Malsky, 29 Braman St., Providence, Rl 02906, U.S.A. E-mail: . What do you get when you cross a wide variety of the world's flutes with a microphone ? Well, the recording could be almost anything and still fall under the rubric of cross-cultural or world music. Luckily, in this instance you get music that is lively, thoughtful and softspoken . The World's Flutes Steel and Bamboo is a duo composed of Robert Dick and Steve Gorn, and between the two of them they've got both the East and the West covered. Dick plays a stainless steel instrument (plus bass flute and piccolo), while Gorn performs principally on a bamboo Indian bansuri (plusJapanese ryuteki, Amazonian Lakota cedar flute, Balinese suling, and East Indian penny whistle.) Similarly , the album's compositions draw upon quite a few models for inspiration : the blues ("Lapis Blues"), a raga ("DTR"), the Japanese court music gagaku ("Seven Cranes"), and the Indonesian gamelan ("Piece in Gamelan Style"). There are also programmatic references as diverse as Mark Twain's "NotoriousJumping Frog of Calaveras County" and the Sea of Holes from the Beatles' movie Yellow Submarine. However, it is the duo's virtuosity in the "tradition" of recent improvisational avant-garde and experimental music that provides the strongest focus for me as a listener. Although Steel and Bamboo has didactic intentions in presenting such a diversity of musical cultures (and each is carefully acknowledged), the references are, ultimately, evocative rather than literal. This is not simply a collection of flute music from around the world, but an attempt at synthesis. For a Western listener, however, it is probably the aural comparisons ofWest with East that provide meaningful orientation. It is precisely at these junctures between the familiar and the unfamiliar that the music is most interesting. A clear place to hear this is where melodies are presented as multifaceted unisons. For example, the CD's first cut, "Lapis Blues," opens with a pair of simultaneous and synchronized solos, each from a different cultural/instrumental perspective. Within a slow and expressive blues form, a single melodic line is filtered through the timbres and performance techniques of both Western steel flute and Indian bansuri. The different approaches to ornamentation, articulation and...