West Oakland Sound Series
2201 Poplar Street Dresher Ensemble Studio Oakland
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Chris Brown + JOHANNA POETHIG
KANOKO NISHI + Kyle Bruckmann + FRED LONGBERG HOLM + PHILIP GELB + Thomas Dimuzio

Chris Brown (composition, virtual piano and interactive electronics) and & JOHANNA POETHIG (video) present "RhythmiChrome" (2023), a suite of 7 scored+improvised pieces in just intonation.

PHILIP GELB, after a long absence from the music scene has returned to performing and this is his first ensemble performance since the Pauline Oliveros memorial festivals where he came out of self imposed retirement to pay tribue to his mentor and dear friend. Due to dental reasons he had to give up the shakuhachi playing that he gained an international reputation for his innovation on the instrument. And thanks to a very generous present from an old friend/former student, he was given a Buchla Music Easel and some Buchla tip top modules, this past year. For the first time in over a decade he has formed a new ensemble featuring 3 of the major players of the bay area scene (Kanoko Nishi-Smith, koto; Kyle Bruckmann oboe, english horn; Thomas Dimuzio synthesizer, sampler) and a newcomer/returnee to the bay area music community, FRED LONGBERG HOLM, cello. Besides being Phil's first ensemble concert in many years (he gave a solo Buchla set, last month) it is also Fred's first concert since relocating back to the bay area where he once lived as a student at Mills in the 80s.


Synesthesia is “a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.” Although they occupy different ranges of the vibrational scale, pitch and rhythm are related by both being defined by their number of vibrations, or beats per second. In his book New Musical Resources the composer Henry Cowell theorized that associating pitch and rhythm by using the same whole number (integer) ratios of their beats can be an effective way compose relationships between rhythm and harmony. With the inventor Leon Theremin in the 1930s he created the Rhythmicon, an electric instrument that played rhythms in the same ratio proportions that define the simplest pitch intervals in the harmonic series. For my piece RhythmiChrome I wrote a Rhythmicon-like software that automatically generates rhythms in congruent ratios of the tuning of notes I play on a MIDI keyboard. Playing chords of these intervals generates polyrhythms that are bound to the pitch relations of the music. And these make attractive foils for improvisation, since for every note I play there is a response that changes both pitch and rhythm in a feedback-like process. The notes I play in RhythmiChrome are are all taken from the composer Harry Partch’s 41-tone tuning based on the numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11. The many different harmonies possible within this system provide unusual tone-colors, some very consonant and others dissonant; Partch painted the keys on his reed organ with colors he associated with each of those numbers, and named his instrument “Chromelodeon”. I wrote Occhio, a song cycle of 7 songs using different subsets or modes of his tuning, each with its own distinctive mood associated with the lyrics drawn from poetry by Italian poet Erika Dagnino. RhythmiChrome is an improvised music based on its score; it’s titles are from the poetry: Sguardo (The Gaze), Umidita (Humidity), Atmosferica (Atmospheres), Palpebre (eyebrows), Pianta (Plant), Pulsazioni (Pulsations), and Respiro (Breath). As a final step in the synesthetic development of the piece Johanna Poethig has composed videos in vibrant collages in response to the music and its themes, that in turn influence my improvising. --CB

Cost: $10-$25 sliding scale

Audio samples in which musicians at this event play:

Videos featuring musicians playing at this event