(Re)Affection for the Cello

As I read about how Sara Galán went about making Incidencias (Audiotalaia), I was taken back to the depths of December years ago when I headed out of the house at 4 AM with a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket to buy the latest craze in the gaming – the Nintendo Wii.  Since that early morning, the use of gesture recognition software used primarily in gaming consoles has provided a slew of new and experimental uses. One such use can be heard on Galán’s Incidencias.

After several years of not playing the cello, the classically-trained Galán, finally picked the instrument back up again. When reacquainting herself with the cello, she teamed up with Edu Comelles to produce two live releases based on the cello and the laptop (Audiotalaia and Colección de Emociones) which were the result of a small tour of Spain. Since that time, Galán, working within Max MSP and Microsoft’s Kinect, developed new techniques in playing the cello that focus of the glitches of human performance. Here is a video of Galán playing the cello.

Now, I’m no expert in cello playing, but I’ll hazard a guess that Galán’s style is not considered normal. Other videos of Galán playing can be found on Vimeo.  Though not even 15 minutes long, Incidencias was an exciting work for me to listen to as it stretch my understanding of what the capabilities of the cello are. Equally impressive was that even though Galán developed her performance technique for Incidencias through the use of various computer software, the album was recorded live. But past all of these technical accomplishments, it is the music that matters in the end, and that music is absolutely the attraction.