Hauschka

Hauschka performing at the CAST Marathon Concert. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington.

Suzanne Bocanegra, Little Dot performance at the Tang Museum, 2010. Photo: Peter Serling.

Hauschka performing at the CAST Marathon Concert. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington.

Fueled by a love of rhythm, Hauschka’s (Volker Bertelmann) classicist training, chamber music sensibilities and pop cultural interests all come together to create playful, unpredictable and inventive music.

About the Residency

In Spring 2013, Hauschka presented a lecture/demonstration for the class “Music and Technology” taught by Evan Ziporyn, Faculty Director of the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology. Over the course of the semester, Ziporyn brought twenty prominent sound and multimedia artists to campus for lectures, demonstrations, workshops and performances open to both students and the general public alike.

Hauschka’s residency culminated in the CAST Marathon Concert performance in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium. Performers included Pamela Z, Dewa Alit, students in MIT’s own Gamelan Galak Tika, Glass Lab Orchestra, Lamine Touré and Rambax groups, and EVIYAN. Hauschka and Pamela Z. improvised a duo using the unfamiliar sounds and techniques of the avant garde, presented in the familiar form of pop songs. Traversing the spectrum of contemporary musical practice, the marathon concluded with an unprecedented world fusion version of Terry Riley’s anthemic In C, featuring Senegalese drums, original glass instruments, electronics and western instruments.

The 2013 Spring Sound Series series laid the groundwork for MIT Sounding, an innovative annual performance series that blurs the boundaries between contemporary and world music founded by Evan Ziporyn in 2014.

The 2013 MIT Spring Sound Series is presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) and MIT Music and Theater Arts.

Schedule

Past Events

Artist Lecture and Demonstration
Co-presented by Music and Theater Arts
April 3, 2013

CAST Marathon Concert
Co-presented by Music and Theater Arts
Friday, April 5, 2013

The four-hour CAST spring concert, following up on 2011’s popular FAST Forward New Music Marathon, featured renowned guest artists Hauschka, Pamela Z., and Dewa Alit performing solo works and with students in MIT’s own Gamelan Galak Tika, Glass Lab Orchestra, Lamine Touré and Rambax. Traversing the spectrum of contemporary musical practice, the marathon concluded with an unprecedented world fusion version of Terry Riley’s anthemic In C, featuring Senegalese drums, original glass instruments, electronics, and western instruments.

Biography

From ping pong balls to bottle caps, leather wedges to pieces of paper, Hauschka (Volker Bertelmann) inserts alien objects between or upon piano strings, hammers and dampers. This technique, an extension of John Cage’s “prepared piano,” allows for the replication of entirely different sounds—whether that of the bass guitar, gamelan or the hi-hat cymbal of a drum kit—to usher in a whole new sonic world.

Hauschka (Volker Bertelmann) is a musician based in Dusseldorf, Germany. Ever prolific, his albums include Substantial (2004), The Prepared Piano (2005), Room To Expand (2007), Foreign Landscapes (2010), and Salon Des Amateurs (2011). Most recently, he’s collaborated with Hilary Hahn in SILFRA released by Deutsche Grammophon.

More at the artist’s website: Hauschka.