World Premiere of Climb!

Composer and pianist Maria Kalionpaa will give the first performance of Climb!, her new interactive work for piano, at the University of Nottingham on June 8^th.

Climb! combines contemporary piano with elements of computer games to create a non-linear musical journal in which the pianist negotiates an ascent of a mountain, choosing their path as they go and encountering weather, animals and other obstacles along the way.

Climb! employs the Mixed Reality Lab’s Muzicodes technology to embed musical triggers within the composition. Like hyperlinks, these may transport the player to another point in the score when successfully played, and may also trigger additional musical effects or control visuals. Climb! also uses a disklavier piano which physically plays alongside the human pianist during key passages, engaging them in a human-machine musical dialogue. The interactive score is delivered using The University of Oxford’s MELD dynamic annotated score renderer.

We are also keen to interview people about their experience of the performance. If you are happy with this it would be very helpful if you could quickly sign up here.

The performance is part of the Nottingham Forum for Artistic Research (NottFAR) concert and events series. Climb! is supported by the EPSRC-funded FAST project (EP/L019981/1).