Text by LEMUR director Eric Singer

After more than a year of work and collaboration, I am extremely excited to tell you about the Orchestrion Project. In 2007, 17-time Grammy-winning jazz artist Pat Metheny came to LEMUR with the idea to produce an album and tour backed entirely by robotic musical instruments. This led to a year-long project where we produced an orchestra of nearly 40 robotic instruments, including GuitarBots, mallet instruments and a large array of percussion. These instruments, augmented with several instruments by other roboticists, comprise the Orchestrion, a robotic orchestra entirely under Pat’s compositional and improvisational control.

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Text by the editor

Today I read following news by Frank J Oteri in Facebook: “Frank J Oteri celebrated the 101st birthday of the most miraculous of composers–the still actively composing Elliott Carter–by completing the revisions on his wind quintet, EC apparently just wrote a new one, and by writing a completely new piece of music.”

“Wow”, I thought “this sounds interesting”! Let’s check this composer out whose birthday was yesterday.

So I searched in YouTube for him and found two videos celebrating his 100th birthday last year, such as Frank J. Oteri interviewing Mr. Carter…..

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Join DJ Spooky as he showcases his new app for iPhone and iPod touch, DJ Spooky The Secret Song. He’ll show you how you can mix and remix recordings using tracks from his new album, The Secret Song, as well as additional sound effects to make your mixes unique. The app is a must-have for dance music, hip-hop, and DJ Spooky fans.

Date: Thursday, December 10, 6:30 – 9:30 PM
Where: Apple Store in Soho, New York

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A native of Cameroon, Francis Mbappe is an unstoppable natural musician who released his third album under his name, after having graced the stage with musical greats such as Herbie Hancock, Manu Dibango, Fela Kuti, Ashanti Tokoto, Francois Louga, and Ernesto Djedje.

Before becoming one of New York’s most sought after bass players, Francis also co-produced and arranged the album “Guido Vittale” for Koning Plank, featuring Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, as well as working on music for the film “Young Maestro,” featuring Elizabeth Taylor and directed by Franco Zeffirelli.

A regular player at NYC’s “The Zinc Bar,” Francis has been deemed “a shining star” in the NYC world music scene. He has livened up all of the New York hot spots for many years as well as continued with his work as a producer under his music production company “FM GROOVE INC.”, bringing people of different origins, educations and backgrounds together, in an attempt to unify people through acts of artistic expression (and put out some damn good music in the process!).

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This is Martin’s second tour in Arnold Schwarzenggers’ territory this year. So another chance for all umeboshi lovers to see him live again.
If there is anybody who would love to write about one of his shows, please email to sohrab.saadat@gmail.com.

Portland, Tues Dec 1st at Doug Fir http://www.dougfirlounge.com/

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