How might keyboard instruments be apprehended as interfaces and archives as well as material and historical assemblages? What are the sources and sinks of the energy that they consume and produce? And how might the answers to these questions help us to sustain keyboard culture into an uncertain future?
This two-day symposium will address these questions by way of the remarkable history of keyboard instruments, experimentation, and electricity across 20th-century New York State. By way of papers by eminent guests, performances by musicians from central New York, and multi-disciplinary reflections from across Cornell’s campus, “Keyboard Energies” will address the means by which keyboard culture has been powered in New York State since Niagara Falls started generating electricity in 1882. Performances will include a hand- and foot-powered program of water-inspired music on Cornell’s baroque organ and a multi-keyboard extravaganza at which electrified clavichords and pianos will be heard alongside their acoustic predecessors as well as the oscillators of the Minimoog synthesizer (designed and manufactured in Trumansburg).
Collaborator:
Roger Moseley, Music
