Lawrence Casserley & Adam Linson: Collaborative Digital Musical Instruments

Lawrence Casserley (born UK, 1941) has devoted his professional career, as composer, conductor and performer, to real time electroacoustic music. He is best known for his work in free improvised music, particularly real-time processing of other musicians' sound, and he has devised a special computer processing instrument for this work. Adam Linson is a double bassist, improvisor, and composer, who also designs, develops, and peforms with real-time interactive computer music systems. He performs regularly on the double bass, acoustically and with live electronics, as a soloist and in a wide variety of ensembles.

In existing literature on digital musical instruments (DMIs), there are many approaches to DMI categorization that carry with them different implications. Most of the focus is on single-player instruments, often tied to sound synthesis, or collaborative interfaces with shared physical control. Recently, there has been more attention devoted to DMIs for improvised music, yet often in terms of the aforementioned dominant instrument concepts. The concept of signal processing as the sole basis for an instrument has received little attention. This concept significantly complicates the notion of collaborative music-making, as the interface is not physically shared. Rather, the acoustic sound source, when it is an acoustic instrumentalist, plays a direct role in the signal processing output. When used in improvisation, the acoustic input instrument and signal processing output instrument form a cybernetic totality of mutual interaction, yet the instrumental activities of each performer remain distinct.

Since the 1990s, Lawrence Casserley has been developing a Signal Processing Instrument (SPI) that allows him to use physical gestures to control signal processing and to direct the morphology of input sounds. Casserely and his SPI are a core part of the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. On several occasions, double bassist Adam Linson performed with the Ensemble, and first met Casserley in this context. Linson's background in improvised music and computers formed the basis of his own solo double bass and signal processing system. Their collective experience seamlessly translated into the Casserley/Linson duet, which combines Linson's double bass with Casserley's signal processing. They have released a critically-acclaimed album, Integument (psi, 2009), and recently have performed together in Germany, Austria, and the UK.

 

Lawrence Casserley (born UK, 1941) has devoted his professional career, as composer, conductor and performer, to real time electroacoustic music. He is best known for his work in free improvised music, particularly real-time processing of other musicians' sound, and he has devised a special computer processing instrument for this work. He has worked with many of the finest improvisers, particularly Evan Parker, with whom he works frequently as a duo partner, in various larger groupings and in the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. He also works as a soloist, processing sounds from voice, percussion and home-made instruments. CDs have been released by ECM, Konnex, Leo Records, Psi, Sargasso and Touch. Casserley's "instrumental" approach to live computer sound processing is the hallmark of his work; the Signal Processing Instrument allows him to use physical gestures to control the processing and to direct the morphology of the sounds. This is the culmination of forty years of experience in the performance of live electronic work; his earliest live electronic pieces were performed in 1969, and he has performed many of the live electronic "classics" of the 20th century; he has also collaborated with other composers to realise their electronic performance ideas. He is noted for the breadth and variety of his collaborations, which cross styles and generations.

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Adam Linson is a double bassist, improvisor, and composer, who also designs, develops, and peforms with real-time interactive computer music systems. He performs regularly on the double bass, acoustically and with live electronics, as a soloist and in a wide variety of ensembles. Born in Los Angeles, he has been active on the double bass and with information technology since age 11. He studied music under George Lewis and Bertram Turetzky at the University of California, San Diego, where he performed jazz, improvised, and twentieth-century orchestral music, and completed a BA in philosophy. From 1999-2009 he was based in Berlin, Germany, where he began working in diverse improvising ensembles in Europe and North America, and also began his sustained involvement with interactive computer music. He has composed music for international contemporary dance productions, and had two residencies at STEIM, Amsterdam. Since 2010 he divides his time between Canada and the UK. Notable guest performances include concerts in Paris and Brussels as part of the Evan Parker Trio with Paul Lytton, and in Berlin with the Alexander von Schlippenbach Trio featuring Parker and Paul Lovens. He can be heard on solo, duet, and (forthcoming) quartet albums on psi, with the John Butcher Group on Weight of Wax, and with the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble on ECM.

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