Laptop orchestra debuts with eclectic electronica

Fifteen people dressed in black kneel before a glowing Apple laptop on an altar-like stand. A petite woman in an iridescent purple tunic stands facing the group, hands spread wide. She makes a flowing, circular motion and a deep drone erupts like something out of a sci-fi movie soundtrack. She points a single finger to the ceiling and the sound builds to a menacing roar.

This is not a scene from the latest horror flick, nor a meeting of an obscure cyber-cult. The woman is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute music professor Tomie Hahn, and the 15 others are the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, or PLOrk. Hahn was conducting her piece of electronic music, "In/Still," at PLOrk's first performance Tuesday in Richardson Auditorium.

MUS 414/COS 414: Princeton Laptop Orchestra, an application-only class, is presided over by music professor Dan Trueman GS '99 and computer science professor Perry Cook. Each PLOrk member uses a programming language called CHucK, developed by graduate student Ge Wang, to create or process sounds on his or her laptop. The sounds are then sent to a hemispherical speaker, one for each laptop. The laptops are networked so the different musicians can feed off each other during the performance, leading to unusually complex arrangements.

"It allows you to improvise at a very different level," Wang said at a rehearsal April 3.

Different pieces use different interfaces, instruments and speaker systems. In the piece conducted by Hahn, for instance, accelerometers attached to her hands translated her motions into sounds and computer commands as she conducted, inspiring her dancelike movements. In another piece, orchestra members improvised using sounds from a live performance by Grammy-winning tabla player Zakir Hussain, who jetted in on Monday after finishing a European tour with his band, Shakti.

Trueman and Cook piloted PLOrk as a freshman seminar in the fall, but this incarnation of PLOrk is filled mostly with upperclassmen and graduate students. The emphasis of the class is less on learning about electronic music and more on performing it. Students spent hours practicing together outside of class to prepare for last night's performance.

"This is more orchestral, while the freshman seminar was more like a lab band," Cook said.

PLOrk has been "remarkably successful," he added. "Dan and I do a triple-take every once in a while — it's been going much better than it could have. The students' enthusiasm has been awesome."

PLOrk members listen to everything from obscure electronica to jazz to U2, and have varying levels of experience with programming and performing. One plans to play guitar in a band in Chicago after graduation; another will be a computer science professor. But nearly all of them were new to the techniques of PLOrk.

John Fontein '08 produces hip hop tracks for Interscope Records, working with artists like Nas and 50 Cent, but said that he "didn't know how difficult it was" to make music on a laptop. "What I use in producing is pre-made sounds — here we're starting with a blank screen," Fontein said.

Luckily, Fontein said, the challenge fosters a sense of community within the group. "We love each other," he said. "Everybody here is essentially a beginner. We can all be confused together."

Cook said that PLOrk will continue next year as a graduate seminar, though Trueman will be on sabbatical. PLOrk will perform again May 6 at the Dartmouth "Orchestras of Sameness" festival.