WILLIAM DUCKWORTH’s CATHEDRAL
Live performance of William Duckworth’s 5-year multimedia internet music project, “Cathedral,” with WiFi hookups available for the audience to play along on virtual instruments.

World Financial Center Winter Garden
Wednesday, November 17th at 7PM
220 Vesey Street
Battery Park City ››› Directions
Admission FREE

» New Sounds Live 2004-2005 Concert Season

Hear (and play along!) with William Duckworth’s interactive music-making project, Cathedral, in the vaulted glass cathedral of the Winter Garden. There’s acoustic and computer music to be heard and made on newly created virtual instruments and conventional ones as part of this Cathedral performance.
Created specifically for the World Wide Web, the Cathedral project was constructed around a collection of five mystical moments in time; the building of the Great Pyramid, the building of the cathedral at Chartres, the founding of the Ghost Dance religion of Native Americans in the late 19th century, the building of the atomic bomb, and the founding of the world wide web.
The whole Cathedral Project is made up of the website; the PitchWeb, which is one of the virtual instruments designed for the site to allow listeners to play together online; and The Cathedral Band, a group of improvising musicians that gives periodic live performances from venues around the world, during which PitchWeb players can contribute to the concert. The Cathedral Band includes Stuart Dempster, trombone, toys, and didgeridoo; Abel Domingues, guitar; William Duckworth, PitchWeb; Nora Farrell, PitchWeb Moderator; Arthur J. Sabatini, The Chronicler; DJ Tamara, records; "Blue" Gene Tyranny, keyboards.

Sit in with The Cathedral Band using the PitchWeb through wi-fi hookups. You’ll need both Shockwave and Quicktime installed to experiment with the PitchWeb, (check your settings at www.pitchweb.net) the virtual instrument that allows anyone to play along with Cathedral in real time by making music out of shapes. It feels kind of like a giant chat-room, but with music-making capabilities. Your sonic building blocks come in several sets, sampled to order by the palette of colors and shapes which are the basis for player-composers who choose the elements of the music to be crafted. More about how to use and play with the Pitchweb: www.pitchweb.net


William Duckworth, composer and co-artistic director William Duckworth is a composer of over 100 works. His Time Curve Preludes for piano define the Postminimal style, of which he is the founder. Since their 1979 premiere, his preludes have been performed on five continents, most recently at the Spoleto Festival USA, the Festival of Havana, and New York's Merkin Hall. Duckworth's first appearance in Europe was at the 1984 Pro Musica Nova festival in Bremen, Germany. More recently, he has been a member of the composition forum at Darmstadt, has given master classes in Rome, and was a featured composer at the 1995 Ferrara Festival. His first internet concert was webcast from the Spoleto Festival USA in 1998. As a performer, Duckworth participated in the 1992 Cagemusicircus, a John Cage memorial concert at New York's Symphony Space, playing Cage's Speech on a short-wave radio, while Laurie Anderson read from the daily papers. Called "a hip, bright, innovative teacher" by Rolling Stone magazine, Duckworth is the author of several books about music, including Talking Music and 20/20, Twenty New Sounds of the Twentieth Century.

Nora Farrell, designer and co-artistic director
Nora Farrell is a graphic artist and programmer. She is the Principal of Out of Hand, a print and multimedia design firm in New York. She is also the founder of Monroe Street Music, a recording and publishing company specializing in contemporary music. Before starting her own company, Farrell worked in the record industry for ten years, serving as executive assistant to the President of RCA, consultant to Polygram, and Director of A&R for TriStar/Sony. At Sony, Farrell was a member of the team that oversaw the development of Sony Music's first presence on the Web. Farrell's client projects have included CD packages for The Hollies, Deep Purple, and MSN's On Air; a Clio-award winning web project for Pringles; websites for CineMuse and C.F. Peters; web projects for Pantene, Lucent, Microsoft and Avaya; and CD-ROMs for ITP, IBM, Bayer, and AT&T. Her work has appeared at Streaming Media West.


Additional Resources:
» William Duckworth’s website
» Cathedral website
» New Sounds Live 2004-2005 Concert Season
» World Financial Center