Thursday, March 18, 2010

Spotlight Floodlight

My debut album "Spotlight, Floodlight - Polarized" and websit... on Twitpic

Keyboardist Peter Adams has been writing, recording and performing music since grade five, but for much of that time he has stayed in the background supporting other musicians - often pretty great musicians. Now, from Intelligent Noise, comes his first fully produced personal album, "Polarized". But still modesty reigns, collegial collaboration abounds behind the scenes, and it is the mysterious doppelganger, 'Spotlight, Floodlight', who steps up to take the bows, while the phenom artist, Peter Adams, slips away back to the studio, already deeply into creating ACT II.

Since his 2003 move to Los Angeles, Peter has played keyboards, guitar, and vocals with great local artists - Michael Penn, Josh Groban, Greg Dulli, Five For Fighting, Lex Land, The Submarines, even while his old friends from Boston keep on callin' - Juliana Hatfield, Tracy Bonham, and Kay Hanley. And - look here! - now he's playing with some of the very British artists that influenced his early musical development - Rob Dickinson (The Catherine Wheel), Tears For Fears, and, most recently, Justin Currie (Del Amitri).

                           

Sunday, March 7, 2010

In Honor of the Bohlen-Pierce Symposium, March 7-9, Boston


Rick Sacks' improvisation based on a original theme created by Peter Hannon using the Bohlen-Pierce 13-interval scale. According to others claiming (with good reason) to understand better than I, Bohlen-Pierce is an harmonic, non-octave scale. Its 13 tone steps fill the framework of the twelfth (3:1 ratio). The scale has a step size of approximately a three-quarter tone (146 cent), the middle-Eastern second degree. Help!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Zoe Keating cellist escape artist


Avant-garde cellist Zoe Keating operates at the "fusion of information architecture and classical music". In this version of her composition, Escape Artist, she demonstrates her intricately layered meta-data composition style. Using her MacBook Pro, Ableton Live, SuperLooper, some 'janky Apple code', a cello and her imagination, the San Francisco based musician shapes her music into something you won't hear at Symphony Hall.