Gregg Biermann

ETUDE

RON MAZUREK - Piano, MIDI Keyboard

Piano Study is a real-time music video performance, which blurs the distinction between cinema recording and live musical performance, fusing aspects of both disciplines into a new one. A laptop serves as a repository for short video and audio sequences of Ron Mazurek playing or otherwise making sound on a grand piano. The laptop is connected to a MIDI keyboard. When a particular key on the keyboard is played it triggers an audio and video sequence, which is projected onto a movie screen via a data projector. The triggered audio and video sequences are not pitched to correspond to the notes on the keyboard. The performer has to learn the MIDI patch much like a pianist playing a prepared piano would have to learn its particular arrangement of percussive and unpitched sounds. All of the video sequences are in sync with the audio sequences that they are associated with. Some audio sequences are not associated with particular video sequences and thus become a kind of  "wild sound" which can be built up into a multi-voice polyphony. In this piece we use the convention of breaking up the keyboard in the following way: white keys have video in sync with sound, and black keys have only asynchronous audio. Here we have a kind of concerto form where sync is the soloist and async is the orchestra. New melodies and visual patterns are created through juxtaposition as well as superimposition. Unlike the linear structure of cinema, which has a set beginning, middle, and end, these real time pieces are unfixed, unpredictable and evolving. Each performance is different with the keyboardist acting as a kind of random access film editor in an improvisation similar to Jazz performance. The experience is unique to the digital age, where random and instant access to recorded motion pictures and audio are possible.

"Musician Ron Mazurek and Film and Video maker Gregg Biermann have wired a keyboard to produce different digital video images...The actual pianos seen playing in Piano Etude refer back to the live performance, imputing almost alchemical powers to the keyboard used" -- Fred Camper, Chicago Reader