Seda Röder

CreatePermanence is Now Online!

Seda Röder — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:21:36 +0000

We have just released a new web application that lets users create their own version of the opening piece “Permanence” of the CD “Listening to Istanbul”. CreatePermanence web application includes listeners in the process of making music. “You can listen to many improvisations and musical gestures that I recorded specifically for this website and then remix them on a timeline at certain points in the compositions,” says Seda Röder, who has been described as “the master of avant-garde pianism” by piano legend Alfred Brendel. “Permanence” by the Turkish composer Tolga Tüzün is written in open form and consists of composed segments and improvisational sections that can be played in an order chosen by the performer. The web application features improvisations that were recorded for “Listening to Istanbul”, plus additional ones that were intended specifically for this web application. With this web application you can re-arrange these segments and improvisations, and change the sonic path of the piece. After you are done, you can download your own version of “Permanence” free of charge.

Please feel free to share it with your friends!

GO TO CREATEPERMANENCE WEBSITE.

Blackbox #012: The Music of Noise

Seda Röder — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 18:59:42 +0000

In this episode I would like to talk about understanding “noise” as a musical element and discuss briefly two milestone pieces that show different approaches to integrating noise into a composition: Poème électronique by Edgar Varèse and Guero by Helmut Lachenmann.

Enjoy!
- Seda

Watch&Read
Art of Noises (1913) by Luigi Russolo

Poème électronique by Edgar Varèse (audio only)

Poème électronique by Edgar Varèse (original video)

Background on Poème électronique

Guero by Helmut Lachenmann (video)

Excerpts in the podcast come from:
CD 1: Electro Acoustic Music: Classics, Neuma Records, 1990
CD 2: Lachenmann, Piano Music / Marino Formenti, Col Legno, 2003

Seda Röder improvizes first-ever electro-acoustic cadenza for a classical concerto

sedaroeder.com — Sun, 15 May 2011 21:24:29 +0000

In this video, New Music Pianist Seda Röder improvises the first-ever electro-acoustic cadenza for a classical concerto!

Röder, who specializes on bringing contemporary music to new audiences, says that “the public at Beethoven’s time would have expect the soloist to improvise in the cadenzas. I wanted to do the same, but in a style that is my own and entirely modern.”

To turn this vision into reality, Seda worked together with Mexican composer Edgar Barroso who provided an electro-acoustic framework that she could use for her improvisations.

When Röder was approached by Harvard conductor Hanjay Wang with the suggestion to perform with the Chinese Symphonic Masterpieces Orchestra, the unusual idea finally came to life!

To find out more about this very special project, please listen to the latest episode of Seda’s podcast in which the pianist shares her thoughts on the unusual performance.

Seda plays “Drifting Through the Echoes of Time” @CCRMA, Stanford University

Seda Röder — Sat, 07 May 2011 00:59:08 +0000

New Music pianist Seda Röder performs Turgut Ercetin’s Drifting Through the Echoes of Time at CCRMA, Stanford University. The composition is featured on Seda’s latest album, Listening to Istanbul.

Inspired by post-spectral as well as computer-aided music Turgut Erçetin introduces a wide range of sonic novelties into his first solo piano piece Drifting through the Echoes of Time. These sounds are produced by alternative playing techniques, such as plucking the strings of the piano, whistling into the piano, as well as by a small device called E-Bow that creates long resonances when brought into close proximity with a piano string. The piece explores the tranquil flow of time and contains excerpts from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (Mein Leben ist nicht diese steile Stunde) that sets the mesmerizing and serene tone of the entire work.

Blackbox #011: Beethoven and Electronics

sedaroeder.com — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 01:37:22 +0000

In this episode I would like to invite you to my upcoming concert with Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto. The concert is taking place on Friday, April 15th at Harvard’s Paine Hall. I will also talk a little bit about what makes this concert so special.

Those of you who can make it to the concert on Friday will hear something very extraordinary. I will be improvising a contemporary cadenza to the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th concerto using a live-electronics framework by composer Edgar Barroso.

In the concert on Friday I will insert an electro-acoustic improvisation into the middle of Beethoven’s notated cadenza demonstrating how different elements from within the concerto are perfectly suitable for such an experiment.

I hope to see many of you at the concert on Friday, if you cannot make it to the concert you will be able to hear a recording on my website, www.sedaroeder.com. I am really excited about this unprecedented experiment, and am looking forward to your comments.

Fri, April 15
8:00 PM
Paine Hall, Harvard University
$5 students
$8 general

Tickets can be purchased at the Harvard Box Office, or at the door.

Presented by the Harvard-Radcliffe Chinese Students Association.
Chinese Symphonic Masterpieces II
proudly presents:

Plum Blossom Country
composer Masaaki Hayakawa

Journey to the West
Double Concerto for Flute and Erhu
World Premiere; Co-commissioned by CSM
composer Oliver Caplan (Harvard SEAS Staff)
soloists Kevin Leu ’11, Flute; Charles Vanijcharoenkarn ’11, Erhu

Allegro from Piano Concerto No.5, Op.73 “Emperor”
composer Ludwig van Beethoven
soloist Seda Röder (Harvard Music Department), Piano

Music director Hanjay Wang ’11

Blackbox #010: New sounds … New techniques …

Seda Röder — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 22:30:09 +0000

By the end of the 19th century we already start seeing composers like Berlioz and Debussy experimenting more and more with the characteristic sounds and colors of different instruments. As a natural result of thinking more in color and effects the instruments had to be forced to their sonic extremes, to create a new sound world. The composers started to explore and expand the sonic possibilities of instruments and pushed these to previously uncharted territories.

In this episode of Blackbox, I would like to give you a short introduction on the development of new playing techniques to create such new sounds. I will also show you a two examples for such interesting sounds from my own repertory: the “fishing line” section from “Lacrymae” by Murat Yakin and the “e-bow+mallet+plucking+whistling” section from “Drifting through the Echoes of Time” by Turgut Erçetin.

Enjoy!
-Seda

Links for further exploration:

Stephen Scott’s “Bowed Piano Ensemble”

How to use an e-bow on a piano

Preparing the piano for “Sonatas and Interludes” by John Cage

“Aeolian Harp” (1923) by Henry Cowell

Blackbox #009: It’s OK if it’s rhythmic!

Seda Röder — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 14:27:40 +0000

In this episode I would like to continue where I finished last time (have a look at: Blackbox #008) and focus on another element which is quite different in contemporary music compared to other types of music: Rhythm.

In this episode I am going to show you that dissonances are actually as such not the reason why some of us find contemporary music uncomfortable. You will see that when we are provided with a steady beat, and a clear rhythmic structure, we can take even the most unbearable dissonances.

Enjoy!
–Seda

PS: next time when you listen to a popular song by Björk or Röyksopp try to imagine the music without the beat. Then you will also see how dissonant some of the most popular songs actually are. If you want to try this out just click on the links below:

Röyksopp: A Higher Place
Björk: Possibly Maybe

Seda on Bayern 2 Radio

sedaroeder.com — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 16:38:37 +0000

Excerpts from Seda’s upcoming CD “Listening to Istanbul” were featured prominently in a recent German radio show on the state of contemporary music in Turkey. The program, which was produced by the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation, closed with a long section from Özkan Manav’s “Movement 6,” a beautiful piece that brings microtonal inflections of Turkish makams to the concert piano.

You can download a copy of the program, which is authored by the German composer Klaus Hinrich Stahmer, here:

Seda on Bayern 2 Radio

(In case you only want to hear the playing, skip forward to 46:00 minutes.)

Enjoy!

Blackbox #008: Reinventing Dissonance and its Resolution

sedaroeder.com — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:50:19 +0000

Tristan Chord

In Blackbox I usually talk about contemporary music. However recently I have been receiving questions about how it all began. So I decided to prepare a few episodes about the beginnings of modern music, and about some of the pieces that are pivotal in showing a new musical direction.

For many of us, contemporary music is defined by its extensive use of dissonances: intervals that -when played simultaneously- sound clashing, and not really in harmony, for some ears even disturbing. But there is something very important here to keep in mind: dissonance as such is not necessarily something unpleasant or unnatural. Composers like Bach, Mozart, Chopin, all used dissonances. With one important point however, when these composers used dissonances, and created tension they always resolved it.

Today I would like to bring three examples for the different uses of dissonance by Mozart, Chopin and Wagner, and show you how these composers handled dissonance and paved the way for the future composers.

– Seda

Commemoration at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, DC

sedaroeder.com — Sun, 16 May 2010 17:23:59 +0000

On May 13, Seda performed for Holocaust survivors and invited guests at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, DC.

The event was held to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the National Fund for the Victims of National Socialism in Austria.

After introductory remarks by the Austrian Ambassador Christian Prosl, the fund’s general secretary, Hannah Lessing, as well as the U. S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, Ambassador Christian Kennedy, and the U. S. Special Representative for Holocaust Era Issues, the Honorable Stuart Eizenstat gave powerful and emotional speeches.

Each attendee was presented with a copy of the anniversary publication of the National Fund–a two volume history of the fund and a impressive collection of memories from Holocaust survivors.

Seda performed selections from her Viennese Piano Music of the Turn of the Century program, which she presented in April at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City.

Photography by Karl Schrammel