PLOrk performs 'A Horde of Premieres and Pianos'

By Evelyn Tu on Aug. 27, 2012, noon

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) performed seven new works in a show titled "A Horde of Premieres and Pianos" earlier this year.

Over the seven years since its founding, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) has inspired the formation of laptop orchestras around the world and has performed at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York City. This spring, PLOrk returned to Princeton's Richardson Auditorium to perform seven new works in a show titled "A Horde of Premieres and Pianos."

Ai Weiwei sculpture installation time-lapse video .

Time-lapse images show the work involved in setting up the "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads" sculptures outside Robertson Hall.

Princeton music course debuts through online learning platform Kadenze .

Princeton University is expanding its online course offerings through Kadenze, an online learning platform specifically created to support the arts and creative technologies. On this platform, Princeton Professor of Music Daniel Trueman will offer the course "Reinventing the Piano," in which students will explore a new instrument called the Prepared Digital Piano.

Video feature: Celebrating choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Robert Rauschenberg .

Silas Riener, a 2006 Princeton alumnus and a former member of Merce Cunningham Dance Company, has returned to campus to work with students in the dance program at the Lewis Center of the Arts on two performance projects that celebrate the mid-20th-century collaboration of dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Robert Rauschenberg.

Sideband to play at Arts Council of Princeton .

Sideband, an offshoot of Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) will perform works by graduate student 'Sidebandits' and Daniel Trueman, professor of music, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, at the Arts Council of Princeton, 102 Witherspoon St. Free admission.

Princeton Laptop Orchestra .

Professors Dan Trueman and Perry Cook lead a project in which students create computer-based instruments that are integrated into conventional music-making contexts. Visit PLOrk's website.

Experimenting with new ways to make music .

Pass by the basement rehearsal space in Woolworth on a Thursday afternoon and you may hear electronic raindrops, a fast-forward reading of Dr. Seuss or a deep moaning that seems to emanate from the bottom of the ocean. You may even hear something you recognize as music, like a rockabilly jazz melody.