{"id":1350,"date":"2010-10-16T06:12:12","date_gmt":"2010-10-16T14:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/?p=1350"},"modified":"2010-10-16T06:22:18","modified_gmt":"2010-10-16T14:22:18","slug":"approximation-festival-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/2010\/10\/16\/approximation-festival-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Approximation Festival 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

I decided to make a mini-tour through Europe after being invited to the 2010 Approximation Festival <\/a>, a five day piano festival in Dusseldorf. For over a year ago, I had been in email contact with a Hamburg-based pianist Thies Mynther about various creative projects. He found out about my work through Coraline<\/em> and told me about some of his theatrical pieces using prepared piano. I couldn’t believe that there was actually someone else out there doing something so similar to Coraline<\/em>. He then wrote a really quirky piece for toy piano and electronics (which I regret that I didn’t play in Dusseldorf.) Just a few months ago, we decided to finally meet in person and he invited me to Dusseldorf to perform with his duo, Phantom\/Ghost<\/a> at the Approximation Festival hosted by Volker Bertlemann (aka Hauschka<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The line-up was filled with interesting musicians–the first night I saw Rachel Grimes (US) and Aki Takase (Berlin\/Japan), followed by Barbara Morgenstern (Berlin) and Kathy Supove (NY) the next night. Already it proved to be a unique keyboard festival allowing a large range of keyboard players with different backgrounds and styles to do what they do. I came a couple days early to work on a few songs with Phantom\/Ghost. Thies (piano) and Derek (vocals) played their own set, then I joined them for three songs (including Theatre is Fun from Coraline) and played my own solo set. It was great to share a stage with Phantom\/Ghost. They write great songs and have a distinctive sound to their style. The experience made me realize that most of the musical endeavors I have are either completely written music or completely unwritten music. My short period of time with Phantom\/Ghost was unusual because it was a collaboration that existed in that gray area in between.<\/p>\n

If you are unfamiliar with Hauschka’s music, I recommend listening\u00c2\u00a0 some of his tracks for piano. I learned on this trip that his music has evolved quite a bit in the last 20 years. It is interesting to ponder the range of his musical background and to know him as a keyboard player now. His solo piano shows often come through New York City and he has recently just released a new record.\u00c2\u00a0 He is definitely someone to listen to (or meet up close) because aside from his music, he is a gem of a person too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I decided to make a mini-tour through Europe after being invited to the 2010 Approximation Festival , a five day piano festival in Dusseldorf. For over a year ago, I had been in email contact with a Hamburg-based pianist Thies Mynther about various creative projects. He found out about my work through Coraline and told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,14,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1350"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1373,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350\/revisions\/1373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}