Simon Bahr

Twelve Bar Blues is based on the consideration that the term blues has referred to very different forms of music at different times in different places. It’s a long way from the origins of the blues to the blues I played myself as a teenager, where it served mainly as a chord scheme to improvise on. How far can we take it and still call it the blues?

Recorded at Pina Bausch Theater, Folkwang Uni, Essen, on 07.07.2021. Performed by Moena Katsufuji (piano), Dima Rudyk (bass) and Jonathan Schierhorn (drums).

Single Finger Mode is a piece for a pianist and a computer playing together on one piano. The piece is composed algorithmically, which allows the computer to rate the accuracy of the live-performance compared to the score. With each note it computes a highscore and uses it to generate an accompaniment to the notes played by the performer. The more accurate the computer considers the performance, the more it will be tamed and adjust to the music played. The less accurate the computer considers the performance, the more will it come to live on its own: It likes tonal chords and consonances very much and is always in for a little fun.

Recorded live on 06.07.2021 at Pina Bausch Theater, Essen. Performed by Ying Yu (piano).

The stage setup of …And Sugar consists of a screen with a black and white video projection and a piano, resembling early day silent movies. However, in certain respects it is transferred to the present: the automated piano plays itself and the black and white surface of the video is digitally reinterpreted by means of a binary rasterisation and transformation.

Recorded at Neue Aula, Folkwang Uni, Essen, on 06.07.2021.

Twelve Bar Blues

trio

composer

Single Finger Mode

solo

...And Sugar

video