Comments on: Beautiful Pictures https://nicomuhly.com/news/2007/beautiful-pictures/ The official website of the New York-based composer Nico Muhly. Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:51:24 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.5 By: Liner Notes Danny https://nicomuhly.com/news/2007/beautiful-pictures/comment-page-1/#comment-157 Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:51:24 +0000 http://nicomuhly.com/news/2007/beautiful-pictures/#comment-157 I have to agree re: Korot/Kid Pix. To be fair, I can’t help thinking that a live performance of Three Tales would be a heck of a lot better than watching it on my TV, where instead of a live performance with clever video accompaniment it’s a stiff video presentation with a Steve Reich soundtrack.

But one of the great things about Steve Reich is the way he embraces the “flaws” in live realizations of his most mechanical process-music, e.g. the way the dirty timbre of the Six Organs complicates that piece and brings it to life. Korot’s Three Tales video doesn’t match up. It smacks of machine presets–like listening to the MIDI file of a string quartet instead of the real thing. All your ingenious counterpoint and motific development (and there’s certainly a lot of that in her libretto/visuals) ain’t worth a dang if it doesn’t have that nuance. Maybe she should go the Gann route, and get somebody to remix it for her?

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