How many people’s resumes include both a gig with the Phillip Glass Ensemble and posing nude for Marie Claire? An evening with new music virtuoso Kathleen Supové is not what most people expect from a solo piano recital. Her show this week finds her flanked by laptops, plus three projectors running childhood slides, live digital video, and the manic pianist from the Lawrence Welk Show, as she crawls in wearing a pink leopard-skin bodysuit narrating on a wireless.

If anyone can turn the grand piano into a digital instrument, it’s Supové. She was so enthralled by the capabilities of Yamaha’s MIDI-enabled player piano, the DC7, that she’s commissioning a body of work for the instrument. Collaborations with electronic composers, often involving microphones in the piano, blend the acoustic sound into an unpredictable, thunderous wonderland of colliding sounds. “Multimedia experience,” though, isn’t just about technology — rather than the usual parade of pieces, her concerts tend to absorb performance art rants into the mic and other “theatricals.” Her obsessive-compulsive commisioning of composers has brought pieces for her by everyone from Xenakis to Zorn to Bubblyfish (best known as a Game Boy player) and, well, me.

I’ve got one more evening with Kathleen at The Flea; I’ll certainly miss it. She certainly suggest a broad range of possibilities of what playing can be about — I hope emerging, younger players take note.

Sorry for the light news day, but I’ll be back next week with lots more coverage, shifting from game systems to how to use game hardware in your own music, more on interactive musical clothing, and other goodies! In the meantime, here’s my next project: -PK

How does a musician go from classical pianist to Game Boy musician? Ask composer / sound designer / sound engineer Haeyoung Kim, who makes 8-bit music under the name bubblyfish. Check out Haeyoung’s site for lots of articles on her and Game Boy music-making in general, as reported by everyone from MTV to MSNBC.

Here in New York, Haeyoung and I, among other composers, will be reimagining pianistic possibilities at a concert by downtown pianist Kathleen Supove, Tuesday through Thursday at 7pm at The Flea in TriBeCa. Piano duet with Game Boy? Check. Electronics generated live from the piano? Check. Video projections on the surface of the piano and live VJing? Check. Even Schroeder would be proud.

For those of you in NY, drop me a line if you’re going to stop by; for everyone else, I’ll be back with some tips learned from the tech in this show.

If you haven’t seen it yet, The History of Sampling by Jesse Kriss lets you interactively navigate the links between sampled songs and samplers. Jesse’s site pulls data from the-breaks, a huge collection of sampling rap music.

The real story, though, is how this site, and many other nifty new sites making rounds on the blogosphere, were built: they use Processing, a completely open-source development environment (Mac/Windows/Linux). Processing should interest CDM readers for several reasons: it’s at home on the Web (there’s even a Google interface!), it’s comfortable with multimedia and graphics, it works with Java, and (perhaps most importantly) it’s designed to be easy-to-learn for those new to programming.

Processing is moving along fast: beta 90 was released today, following the first public beta release April 20. New learning materials are being added regularly for those ready to try it. It’s even been used in a Papa Roach video (check the exhibition page). And don’t forget Chris O’Shea’s Sonicforms, the open-source repository for alternative/tabletop musical interfaces, which uses Processing for part of its software interface, along with Pure Data — another free tool for interactivity.

None of these tools may be for total newbies, but they’re free and can be a great way of entering the world of programming. Readers working on this, let me know, and we’ll keep track of your projects and progress (and exchange tips). If nothing else, some readers will certainly enjoy seeing what you’re doing!

Two- or three-octave keyboards from M-Audio? Whatever. Try the “original” mini-keyboard: the toy piano. Doron Altaratz hacked a toy piano for use as a video controller: play keys, and this visual organ responds with smoothly-shifting visuals. (VJs will know Doron as the alter-ego of VJ Sputnik.)
For more on IMC Expo plus pictures, see the CDM show report.

If you’ve dreamed of navigating through virtual reality worlds with just your hands, a la the movie Minority Report

, you’ll like the prototype of CINE (Collaborative Immersive Network Environment) by Miro Kirov, Houston Riley, and James Tunick with advisors Jean-Marc Gauthier and Frank Migliorelli (yes, it’s those crazy NYU ITP folks again!) Full-body gestures let you navigate in 3D.

I tried out CINE at the Studio IMC Expo. It’s certainly fun to play with, though keep in mind in prototype phase it has a ways to go before it lives up to some of its lofty design goals. There are possibilities for music and sound, too, though: the up-front interface is apparently Max/MSP. So if you’re looking to mix the Holodeck with musical performance, there may be promise.

See CDM’s IMC Expo report for more shots of this and other showcased creations.