Infrasonic Series: Piano + Pixels - McNeill / n3wttron

Piano + Pixels

The Infrasonic Series presents pianist Michael McNeill performing an afternoon of music evoking the dream world and its resonances in waking life. Anchoring the program is Dorothy Rudd Moore's "Dream and Variations" (1974), a work of rugged, mid-20th-century American modernism that explores "a land of dreams which range from euphoric bliss to nightmarish disturbance". McNeill will also play several of his own works highlighting the ethereal resonances of the piano. Bookending these will be Alexander Scriabin's Eight Etudes, op. 42 (1903), works of sumptuous late Romanticism that hint at the dramatic developments of the coming decade. McNeill will perform behind a scrim, onto which Buffalo-based light artist n3wttron will project surreally somnambulant visuals.

Watch a recent multimedia performance by Windsong with Kelly Armor

The program will open with a transformative blend of tradition and innovation. For the first time, Indigenous flute player, Windsong (Allen Brown), Ethan Hayden (audio FX) and Buffalo-based photographer Tim Sager unite to explore the liminal space between waking life and lucid dreams. The performance will combine Windsong's meditative approach to his instrument with Sager's darkly asymmetrical photos from across the Rust Belt. Hayden's audio processing will expand Windsong's flute, creating layers of misty counterpoint. Sager's transformative photography uses experimental techniques such as stereo pinhole photography—where two holes blend different views of scenes such as factories—envisioning uncanny architecture akin to the impossible spaces of M.C. Escher.

Installation by iki nakagawa: Erie winter skies and ice