The Playground and Leon Gallery present an annual evening of experimental and improvised electronic music created and performed by Playground Ensemble composers. Interesting sounds in interesting spaces; interactive electronics, manipulated voice, uniquely created instruments, and more.Program:Alia Goldfarb, Vocals
Silen Wellington, Electronics
“This is what we have forgotten about the sky (that we have made Overlord without consulting him), how much it desires to fall like the angels … How much it desires to spill its sunlight and its starlight into the inky darkness forever. How much it desires to quench the soil with its sky waters.”
~ Lee Morgan, Standing and Not Falling
Known Input by Conrad Kehn
Known Input is a multimedia experiment for no input mixer, reactive video, live performers, and audience. Conrad started working with no input mixer in the summer of 2024. The process is simple. Take the outputs of a mixing console and run them back into the inputs creating a perfect feedback loop. Every knob turned or fader adjusted adjusts amplitude and frequency in the most perfectly unpredictable ways. Over time Conrad has fallen in love with these sounds. Such rich textures, piercing, grinding, deep and beautiful.
Over top of the no input mixer a manipulated recording of Allan Kaprow’s ‘How to Create A Happening’ adds an anti-art narrative, and a set of audio reactive videos clips support that narrative via unrelated synchronicity.
Lastly members of the audience are encouraged to participate based on a set of note card instructions creating…… well…… a happening.
chorale_prelude no. 3 by David Farrell
chorale_prelude no. 3 is an ambient work for live electronics. Composed in 2025, the work presents fragments of music from a chorale by JS Bach alongside a range of varied harmonic and textural backgrounds. The work follows a quasi-improvised path, with the performer having a palette of sounds to freely choose from.
Shadow Speak by Ryan Fiegl
This pieces uses generative feedback loops. The sources include live input guitar and various premade and live samples.
For this year’s performance of Unchambered, the Playground Ensemble is pleased to also present the following guest artists:
improvisation by Jakey Wherry
Jakey enjoys improvising using a series of samplers and loopers. Melodic and harmonic ideas are captured, then shifted and manipulated, providing a new landscape for ideas to develop. The synthesizer provides the opportunity for surprise; not knowing exactly where a road will lead keeps Jakey listening and responding in the moment.
-According to Dissonance by David BrittonAbout Playground Ensemble:
The Playground Ensemble, in Residence at Metro State University of Denver, is the Rocky Mountain Region’s premier new music group. We are professional musicians, composers, educators and fans dedicated to presenting chamber music as a living art form.In addition to concert seasons that feature the work of recognized composers, we work to cultivate a thriving local composition community. With exciting outreach programs like our innovative Young Composers Playground we are showing young people that classical music is vibrant, adventurous and relevant. We hope to inspire our audiences to not only listen, but to create!Collaboration is at the heart of the Playground’s artistic vision. We commission new works by living composers, perform in support of touring improvisors, and perform regularly. We work with dancers, poets, spoken word artists, visual artists, and multi-media artists, finding inspiration across disciplines and exploring new, hybrid artistic forms.The Playground has performed at many notable venues and festivals including the Biennial of the Americas, the National Performing Arts Convention, the International Society of Improvised Music Annual Conference, Mile High Voltage Festival, MCA Denver, Boettcher Hall, the Clyfford Still Museum and the Denver Art Museum.We have performed with, or worked directly with a diverse cast of new music luminaries including Eyvind Kang, Morten Lauridsen, So Percussion, Evan Ziporyn, Roomful of Teeth, Caroline Shaw, Jace Clayton (DJ /rupture) and Tatsuya Nakatani.Our efforts have been recognized and supported by numerous regional and national organizations including the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Chamber Music America, The Amphion Foundation, The American Music Center, New Music USA, the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado, the Singer Foundation and the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District. |
