Last week saw the first public performance of five Homstal pieces at the Residency Eina Dance in Norway. I performed National Day, Dublin Fire Brigade, Akershus Arena, This is an important message for Julie Wade, and Carolina. The audience was very appreciative, and the show went well with only a couple of minor hitches. I found it a bit tricky to manage the saxophone and piano playing, Max and Ableton control, audio monitoring, and video documentation all at once; perhaps I’ll enlist some tech help for future Homstal performances.

The barn at the R.E.D. was a lovely place to perform. The acoustics were very flattering for the saxophone and the projection on the side of the barn worked very well. Thanks to Ella Fiskum and Sudesh Adhana for all of their help and support with this project!

The video clip below is of National Day. I recorded some video footage of the National Day parade in Oslo on May 17, and then did some pre-processing in Max to create the projected video. The amplitude of the saxophone is mapped to the brightness of the video so that when I play, the video appears. The Max patch also tracks the pitches that I play and triggers a different harmony for each pitch. I really enjoy playing this piece, as the accompaniment and video projection really seem to flow from the playing; I am less comfortable when I feel like I am playing along to something fixed.

I hope to record some of the new pieces in the studio in Windsor this summer or early fall; I ‘ll post them when they are ready.