May

May is the latest collaboration between New York composers Taylor Deupree and Kenneth Kirschner.

Recorded on May 9, 2008 at the OFFF Festival in Lisbon, Portugal, the album represents the first available live recording of Deupree and Kirschner’s concert performances.

Continuing in the direction of their acclaimed post_piano series, Deupree and Kirschner’s live work explores the intersection between piano and state-of-the-art digital music technology.

For this performance, Deupree and Kirschner took an even more experimental approach than they have in past concerts:  sitting side by side at a single grand piano, they both played piano and both played laptop, with Kirschner playing the keys of the piano and Deupree directly manipulating the strings inside, even as they both shared the duties of electronic processing and sample manipulation.

The result is a rich and complex mixture of digital and acoustic timbres that breaks new ground in their ongoing exploration of the role of the piano in contemporary electronic music.