Sonic Arts Union: David Behrman + Ensemble
Preceded by panel discussion with Andrew Raffo Dewar, Thomas Patteson, and Chris Madak at 6pm
David Behrman presents a live version of “My Dear Siegfried,” a performance environment in which musicians interact with texts by Sam Behrman and Siegfried Sassoon and with music software designed to respond to the performers’ actions. The two writers met once in 1920. Many years later, each author wrote about this youthful meeting, which inaugurated a long-lasting friendship and a correspondence, mostly conducted via trans-Atlantic letters between England and the United States.
David Behrman has had a long and storied career as a composer, academic, and record producer. His early work featured homemade electronics, but he eventually moved to using computers to create interactive systems that respond to players, sensing their inputs to generate complementary material. He worked at Columbia Records producing the “Music of Our Time” series of new music recordings for Columbia Masterworks, which presented works by Cage, Oliveros, Lucier, Reich, Riley, Pousseur and other influential composers.
David Behrman, laptop, violin, guitar; Eric Barsness and Thomas Buckner, vocals; Ralph Samuelson, shakuhachi; Peter Zummo, trombone and auxiliary instruments and Ted Mook, cello
Sonic Arts Union Retrospective has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Music Project.
