juncTions was inspired by the Toronto-based keyboard collective junctQín. In 2009, junctQín asked me to write a piece for three pianists performing on one piano. Their request triggered several interesting questions for me: What can be achieved on a piano if one person plays the instrument in a traditional way (pressing the keys and pedals) while a second one is playing the inside (with an e-bow and a tone bar, tools more commonly used by guitar players) and a third musician is operating a computer program that creates an immersive maelstrom of sounds by processing the sonorities of the two piano players?
The inside and outside sound worlds of the piano confront and connect with each other. For example, connections are intentionally achieved when one player creates a glissando by sliding a piece of metal along the very strings which are excited, hit by the hammers the second player has activated.
At first glance the score may look pretty sparse. However, those delicate sound processes that are created by the two players at the piano are fed into a computer program which densely superimposes them and projects them into the space. In this piece, the piano is used as a versatile sound device with a flexible resonator. All the harmonic relationships of the notes are based on four odd-numbered overtone series (starting with the low A key) which are collapsing into the middle B of the piano. This tone acts like a secret harmonic thread, often emphasized by an E-Bow which can infinitely sustain sound, contradicting the expected decay of a piano note.
In juncTions, a type of hyper-instrument is created from a common piano, freed from its inherent historical connotations; no longer referencing the piano music between Mozart and Stockhausen ... The only thing that matters now is the expansion of its sound into the space.
Info: http://www.essl.at/works/junctions.html
