Ravinia 2019, Issue 7, Week 15

AUGUST 26, 2019 – MAY 9, 2020 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 25 With Natural Machines , Dan Tepfer programmed not only real-time musical- response algorithms, but also visualizations to reveal musical structures as they unfolded with his improvisations. Inventions/Reinventions , which contin- ues Tepfer’s relationship with Bach. e composer’s Inventions and Sinfonias are a collection of two-part and three- part contrapuntal works respectively that he originally intended as exercises for his students. Tepfer played the Inventions as a child and has always loved these short “crystalline” works which he describes as deceptively challenging. Although Reinventions seems in some ways like what he did with the “Goldberg Variations,” it is actually quite di erent. Unlike each improvised variation in which he draws on melodic, rhythmic, and technical ideas from a correspond- ing Bach variation, the improvisations in Inventions/Reinventions are more ab- stract. In other words, he will keep his “Reinvention” in the same key as the In- vention that it follows, but he will devise his own theme and develop it along the lines of Bach, yet in his own way. Just how similar the old and new inventions will be is yet to be determined. “ is is going to be a world premiere, so who knows?” he says. “But I’d like to keep the relationship at this point relatively mys- terious.” One thing that is certain is that the “Reinventions” will be longer than the Inventions, which each run around a minute or less, because it’s too hard to improvise something of any substance in such a short time span. Overall, Tepfer expects Inventions/Reinventions to last to minutes. T HOUGH his Bach projects have not been his only foray into classical music—he has also written such works as the concerto for piano and winds e View from Orohena ( ) and Solar Spiral , one of two works for piano and string quartet that he premiered at Ravinia in —they have certainly brought him the most attention in that realm, espe- cially Goldberg Variations/Variations . “ at’s really been huge for me,” he says. “I really hate the idea of being con ned to a genre. As much as I love having a competence in a eld, I don’t want to be con ned only to the people who listen to that. at doesn’t make sense to me.” e varied, crossover nature of Tep- fer’s career today was exempli ed in a recent tour to Australia, in which he played Goldberg Variations/Variations in a concert hall, his Natural Machines (more on that below) in two multime- dia venues, and jazz trio engagements in four di erent clubs. “ at gives you an idea of what I’m trying to do,” he says. But even as he continues to expand his musical reach, Tepfer remains at his core a jazz pianist. A er a diversion that took him to the University of Edinburgh for an undergraduate degree in astrophys- ics, he graduated from the New England Conservatory in Boston in . He moved to New York City and quickly es- tablished himself in the jazz scene there, playing with the likes of Steve Lacy, Joe Lovano, and Lee Konitz, who would become a close, reg- ular collaborator. Indeed, Tepfer and Konitz, a -year- old saxophonist, re- leased Decade , their second duo album, in July . “Everyone needs a center to what they are doing, like a home,” Tepfer says, using the metaphor of a tree needing to reinforce its roots as its crown expands. “My competence, the thing I can do at a really professional level is play jazz. I feel like when I’m playing classical that I’m visiting this world that I love but I’m an outsider.” But just as the pianist does with his Bach-focused projects, he likes to break new ground with his more jazz-centered initiatives as well. A perfect example is his latest album, Natural Machines , re- leased in May. He wrote a series of com- puter algorithms for it that allow him to improvise with himself in real time us- ing a Yamaha Disklavier, a kind of mod- ern-day player piano, and create music he couldn’t do in any other way. Every note that he plays on the Disklavier is sent to a computer, which uses his programmed algorithms to respond to what he’s doing. “ e computer sends data back to the pi- ano for it to play in response,” he says, “and the keys move all by themselves. And then, of course, I react to that, be- cause I’m improvising. So, it’s a feedback loop and a true duet with a computer.” [Several of these algorithmic-response improvisations were featured on Tepfer’s Ravinia concert.] And though at rst blush it might seem very far away, even Natural Ma- chines , with its mix of the human and mechanical, creativity and regimenta- tion, is not totally divorced from Bach. “I like to say that a lot of the music I love lives at the intersection of the algorith- mic and spiritual,” Tepfer says, “and Bach is a prime example of this.” e Baroque composer liked to set rules or algorithms for himself—a fugue or canon—but also leave himself a degree of freedom. “ at, to me, is really the genius of Bach, know- ing how to negotiate that balance very delicately,” he says. “It’s very expressive but at the same time strongly supported by structure.” Much the same could be said about everything Tepfer does. Kyle MacMillan served as classical music critic for the Denver Post from 2000 through 2011. He currently freelances in Chicago, writing for such publications and websites as the Chicago Sun-Times , Wall Street Journal , Opera News , and Classical Voice of North America . NICOLAS JOUBARD