This concert will consist of piano music specifically composed for Yamaha Disklaviers, which are acoustic pianos designed to record and play back performances by pianists. They can also be controlled directly by computers using MIDI. All of the works on the program were written for the instruments under computer control and without human players. The performance will include pieces by Chris Dobrian, Kyle Gann, Gordon Green, Steve Horowitz, and David Jason Snow. Two Yamaha Grand Disklaviers will be triggered or “played” by a computer during this 90-minute event.

Stephen Malinowski’s Music Animation Machine, music visualization software that can illustrate the harmonic and melodic structure of music in real-time, will accompany the music as it is performed. According to Malinowski, the “…display is a score without any measures or clefs, in which information about the music's structure is conveyed with bars of color representing the notes. These bars scroll across the screen as the music plays. Their position on the screen tells you their pitch and their timing in relation to each other. Different colors denote different instruments or voices, thematic material, or tonality…The experience of watching the Music Animation Machine can be a remarkable awakening to the inner structure of music, especially for people who are sensitive to music but lack the training to ‘see inside’ a conventional musical score.”

The organizer of the event, Gordon Green is a composer whose work takes maximum advantage of computer technology afforded by the Yamaha Disklavier. Green’s noted work Arrangement and Variations for Digital Piano was described by Peter Burwasser of Fanfare Magazine as “an impressive marriage of technology and art that can serve as a model for other explorers of the digital piano.” The like-minded composers performing with Mr. Green also use Yamaha’s technology to its capacity, often composing music that human hands simply cannot play.