Can I recommend an amazing improvising cellist? Zoë Keating has invented a fantastic technique of real-time layering of sounds from her cello, using a pickup connected to a sampler and loop-back system. The setup is controlled by foot pedals as both hands are fully occupied obviously!

Here's her web site http://www.zoekeating.com and on the "Projects" page there's a set of free MP3 downloads of short exceprts (Exurgency/Walking Man/Arrival/Updraught/Coda ).

She rocks!

Hope this is OK to post.

Actually those MP3's are excerpts and a bit short in duration, a live recording of a complete concert by her is available free at:
http://zekesgallery.blogspot.com/2005/08/z...s-part-one.html
http://zekesgallery.blogspot.com/2005/08/z...s-part-two.html

You want an honest view?
It's clever but I'm not amazed. Could be because I'm listening through computer speakers. She seems to make nothing of the masses of effects you can get from a cello without electronics, and the texture of the extracts seems unvarying.

If anything it sounded like early Mike Nyman but without refinement of texture. There were no subtleties - perhaps the extracts were too short. I have no problems with 'minimalist' or contemporary styles, or taking performers and instruments to their absolute limits.
The technique may seem fantastic but it's been done before, being the mainstay of most recent electroacoustic music. Doesn't mean someone else shouldn't have a go.
I wouldn't buy it though.

But if you're a fan - respect!

Yes, it's certainly fairly easy listening and not "on the edge" like Frances-Marie Uitti playing Scelsi (http://www.uitti.org/) for example. More dissonance for contrast would be one way for her to develop further perhaps.

Which string instrument players in particular do you think are doing interesting stuff now?

i kind of echo watermelon's view. these freely improvised things usully come off best in concert [if at all] than a cd because the atmosphere can't be recordd on any current medium.
besides i have doubts about recording improvised pieces as finished products. yeh, you get a snapshot and that becomes a 'score' but the nature of impro is that performances are never the same. i'm half-an-half about that = popular band recordings i like best are the bootlegs that seem to catch an atmosphere that a studio doesn't but i think thats more about controlled[studio] v unbound.

i'll have another listen but first time those extracts seemed a bit samey.

Howdy!

Y'all might be interested in these other recordings I have as well.

http://zekesgallery.blogspot.com/2005/06/s...zekes-june.html
and
http://zekesgallery.blogspot.com/2005/07/t...e-at-zekes.html
http://zekesgallery.blogspot.com/2005/07/t...t-zekes_21.html

Sakamoto, I think, would be more up Watermelon sugar's alley, as he used a grinder on his cello, a saw, and also did some throat singing during his performance here.

Storini probably (I hope) would get a kick out of the Toy Box Orchestra, they're more rhythmic, if you get my drift.

You could put those recordings on YetAnotherPianist's website. Go to Forums Café, then ABRSM Yahoo Group for more information.

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