April 25-26, 2025
How might keyboard instruments be apprehended as interfaces and archives as well as material and historical assemblages? What are the elemental 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?
Keyboard Energies will address these questions via the intertwined histories of keyboard instruments, experimentation, and electricity across 20th-century New York State. By way of papers by eminent scholars, performances by musicians from across the region, and multi-disciplinary reflections from far and wide, we will investigate and demonstrate the means by which keyboard cultures have been powered in New York State since Niagara Falls started generating electricity in 1882.
Performances will include a multi-keyboard extravaganza at which electrified clavichords and pianos will be heard alongside their acoustic predecessors and harpsichord strings will vibrate in sympathy with the oscillators of the Minimoog synthesizer (designed and manufactured in Trumansburg).
Schedule of Events
April 25, 2025
9:30AM – 12:00PM – Global Keyboards Session 1 in Lincoln Hall B20
1-3PM – Global Keyboards Session 2 in Lincoln Hall B20
7:30PM – Elemental Energies at the Keyboard Concert in Barnes Hall
April 26, 2025
9-11:30AM – Keyboard Energies Session 1 at A.D. White House
Featuring Roger Moseley (Cornell), Nathan Laube (Eastman School of Music), Anne Laver (Syracuse) and Annette Richards (Cornell)
11:45AM-12:30PM – “Wind and Water” Lecture/Recital by David Yearsley at Anabel Taylor Chapel
2-4PM – Keyboard Energies Session 2 at A.D. White House
Featuring Owen Marshall (Cornell), Deirdre Loughridge (Northeastern University), and Darren Mueller (Eastman School of Music
5PM – Gary Versace Organ Trio Concert in Lincoln Hall B20
Concerts
April 25, 2025 at 7:30pm (Barnes Hall): Elemental Energies at the Keyboard
Harpsichord strings will vibrate in sympathy with the oscillators of the Minimoog synthesizer over the course of a program tracing the theme of musical elements as well as the electrification of New York State. Performing on an array of keyboard instruments ranging from the clavichord to the Clavinet, Cornell faculty and graduate students will be joined by special guests from the Ithaca area in presenting music by CPE & JS Bach, David Borden, Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy, Jasmine Edison, György Ligeti, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Dane Rudhyar, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Richard Wagner.
Performers:
Gabriel Borden
Federico Ercoli
Thomas Feng
Patricia Garcia Gil
Owen Marshall
Ariel Mo
Roger Moseley
John Petronzio
Annette Richards
Morton Wan
Jack Yarbrough
David Yearsley
Instruments:
Barnes Hall Chamber Organ
Fender Rhodes & RMI 368X Electric Pianos
Friederici Clavichord
Hohner Clavinet
Minimoog analog synthesizer
Steinway grand piano
Walter-McNulty fortepiano
Wolf harpsichord
April 26, 2025 from 11:45am-12:30pm (Anabel Taylor Chapel)
David Yearsley presents a lunchtime lecture-recital as part of the Keyboard Energies Symposium through the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards
April 26, 2025 at 5pm (Lincoln Hall B20): Gary Versace Organ Trio
Program to include a selection of jazz standards and original music – announced from stage.
Gary Versace, Hammond B3
Nate Radley, Guitar
Michael Sarin, Drums
The CCHK gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Rural Humanities Initiative, the Society for the Humanities, and the Central New York Humanities Corridor, funded by an award by the Mellon Foundation.
All events are free and open to the public.