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).
Keyboard Elements
Friday, April 25, 7:30pm (Barnes Hall, Cornell Unversity)
From J. S. Bach to David Borden, Richard Wagner to Earth, Wind, and Fire, and the clavichord to the clavinet, this concert will explore the elemental sources and reflections of music that has taken shape at keyboards over the last three centuries.
Performers:
Gabriel Borden (guitar)
Jean Bernard Cerin (baritone)
Federico Ercoli (keyboards)
Patricia García Gil (keyboards)
Roger Moseley (keyboards)
Jon Petronzio (keyboards)
Annette Richards (keyboards)
Mike Sarin (drums)
Morton Wan (keyboards)
David Yearsley (keyboards)
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
Keyboard Energies
Saturday, April 26, 9am-4pm (Guerlac Room, A.D. White House, Cornell University)
9-11:30am: Paper Session 1
Featuring Deirdre Loughridge (Northeastern University), Darren Mueller (Eastman School of Music), Owen Marshall (Cornell), and Annette Richards (Cornell)
2-4pm: Paper Session 2
Featuring Todd Cowen (Cornell), Nathan Laube (Eastman School of Music), and Roger Moseley (Cornell)
Saturday, April 26, 5pm (Lincoln Hall B20)
Jazz trio concert. Featuring Gary Versace (Hammond B-3 organ), Nate Radley (guitar), and Mike 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.