(2020) Bruce Brubaker & Max Cooper - Glassforms


Review:
Two leaders from very different musical worlds, the innovative pianist Bruce Brubaker and scientist-now-electronic-artist Max Cooper collaborate to create this latest expression of music by Philip Glass and tell a story of diversity and vulnerability. Rather than just reworking or augmenting via traditional means, Max Cooper and Bruce Brubaker fundamentally rewire Glass’ forms in a manner that’s not possible with human composition tools. Max built a new system for musical expression through coding with software developer Alexander Randon, creating a tool for taking live data from the piano and transforming it into new but intimately related forms which drive his synths on stage. Commissioned by and introduced at the Paris Philharmonie in 2019, Glassforms melds the acoustic concert grand piano with synths and the electronic sound world of now to create a dynamic experience. “In Glassforms, Max Cooper and I joined forces on stage to create a collective artwork. It is based on Philip Glass’ music, but reinvigorated, recontextualized, postmodernized”, explains Brubaker. Cooper adds: “It’s a risk we want to take, an experiment, an exciting project that allows us to create a combination of traditional and modern composition techniques, something like modulated authenticity.” Glassforms is composed of six tracks of very different durations, varying between 2 minutes and 14 seconds, the shortest, and 13 minutes and 6 seconds, the longest. To connect these six pieces, Cooper and Brubaker improvise transitions, called “Preludes”, in each performance. Thus, they pay homage to a long tradition in the world of pianists, who are used to improvising both introductions and transitions in their concerts. Each time Glassforms is performed, a whole new show is born, in which Max tries to control the chaos generated by the real-time information generated in response to Bruce’s live-playing. In Cooper’s words: “It is a balance between order and chaos, which is, for me, where the most beautiful music arises.”





Tracklist:



Media Report:
Genre: ambient, classical
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits