Informatics Phil, Pro Arte Singers shine

It was an incredibly exciting weekend at the Jacobs School of Music, even if opera isn’t your cup of tea.\nOn Saturday afternoon, School of Informatics professor Christopher Raphael gave a demonstration of what might just be the most exciting musical development since the metronome – Music Plus One. \nRaphael was inspired to conceive Music Plus One by the shortcomings of the well-known accompaniment system Music Minus One. Music Minus One, which this writer once used to learn Mendelssohn’s first piano concerto, is particularly challenging for solo players because it mandates a tempo and is incapable of adjusting according to the soloist.\n“It’s really a battle of wills,” Raphael told the crowd in Sweeney Hall, describing the difficulty of playing with such rigid accompaniment. His goal with Music Plus One was to improve upon the idea of canned accompaniment by creating a system that could respond to the interpretative desires of the soloists. And if the stunning performances on Saturday were any clue, he has succeeded beautifully.\nFirst, Raphael gave a demonstration himself on the oboe, an instrument he has played for most of his life. After giving a “normal” performance of the Mozart oboe quartet, he repeated the excerpt making extreme changes in tempo, repeating measures and intentionally playing wrong notes. The program, contained on his Dell laptop to which he was attached with a microphone, followed him as well as you would expect a live string trio.\nOf course, as Raphael conceded, his demonstration was merely an exaggeration of the program’s adaptive capabilities. The real musical test came with the magnificent performances by student violinists Yoo-jin Cho and Thomas Rodgers. Both extremely gifted musicians, they led their “orchestra” with skill and authority. The degree of synchrony between them and their Music Plus One playback was nothing short of astounding.\nViolin professor Mimi Zweig, with whom Raphael developed the demonstration, told the crowd that she was hoping for a Music Plus One studio in the music school’s new facilities, plans for which have yet to be released publicly. I, for one, certainly hope the administration makes it happen.\nFor something completely different, I stopped in Auer Hall Sunday afternoon for a concert of Mozart and Haydn by the Pro Arte Singers and Classical Orchestra, conducted by John Poole. Both ensembles are dedicated to the performance of early music in as historically accurate a manner as possible. \nOn the program was Mozart’s Kyrie in D minor, followed by Haydn’s Der Sturm and Missa Solemnis in B flat major, the performances were breathtaking in their accuracy and sensitivity. The members of Pro Arte produced moments of \n|incredibly concentrated power as well as mystifying sensitivity. Their crystal-clear Latin and German rang brilliantly through the hall, especially notable in a space that has been known to swallow words whole. The orchestra, for its part, was crisp and energetic, particularly the violin section, and provided excellent support for the choir behind it.\nNone of this came as any surprise, however, as I’ve come to expect such high quality from Poole. He has a quiet, English-bred dignity that begets a great respect, even reverence, for the score before him, producing a subtle, sophisticated interpretation every time. \nIn an odd side note, I also couldn’t help but notice that Sunday was the second of Poole’s concerts I’ve attended where a violinist has lost an E string.