Concert: Say You're With Me. Larkhall - Piano and Creative Coding
Tonight, back with TAC, who were advertising an interesting show - Say You're With Me. Larkhall - Piano and Creative Coding. A combination of music, and visuals generated from associated algorithms. Sounded interesting enough that I headed all the way to Chelsea Theatre for it.
I thought of eating around there - the theatre itself was no help in that regard, the cafe closes at 5. But as I made my long way there - bus, followed by Tube to Sloane Square, from where I could walk or take another bus - it occurred to me that I'm a fan of Cote in Sloane Square. So I moseyed along there, on spec - was seated pretty quickly, chose pretty much my usual from the menu. And waited for someone to take my order.
I was to be glad I brought the paper - I had it finished, and was playing my phone game, by the time the manager finally noticed I still had the menus, and my order hadn't been taken. His eyebrows raised, and it wasn't long before someone shuffled over to me. For 20 minutes, they'd been up and down, mostly carrying food, and me getting hungrier and hungrier - and you couldn't blame it on the crush; the place was quite empty. Well, I ordered. At last. From the Prix Fixe menu - as they have a three-course option, I made sure to order dessert at the same time - I've had trouble before with them adding it as an extra.
Had calamari to start - lovely, really light, with a tasty sauce. Mind you, my wine still hadn't arrived when that did - I had to ask the waiter to remind them to bring it. Had steak frites for main - good, as ever, except now served with rocket, which I hate, and ignored. Had a second glass of wine - the waiter said she wasn't a wine waiter, and couldn't bring it, so I begged her, please, to get someone else to do it. I had visions of it never coming. Happily, it did. And I had a chocolate mousse for dessert.
Interestingly, when the bill came, the meal was broken down as a two(!) course prix fixe, with a separate dessert. To be fair, the charge does work out the same, at least for the mousse - in this case, possibly it was so they could then conspicuously deduct the dessert from the bill - the manager had deducted the charge as an apology. Lovely man.
And so I set off, straight down the King's Road. Lovely, sunny evening for it - if a bit hot:
The man at the box office ticked my name off a list - the bar and theatre are upstairs. Although I'm not sure this sign was terribly flattering to the performer:
I got a drink - in plastic - and took a seat with my back to the sun streaming in the window. Until it was time to go in:
So, attached to the piano is a computer system called "Otto". And for the next hour or so, the pianist played his compositions - nice, soothing mood music, easy-listening, if you like - while accompanied by various artificially generated images on screen. It's obvious that he - or someone else - had put in the basic framework for the look and feel of the images for each song; Otto wouldn't have been so inventive. Once the basic colours, shapes or whatever are decided on, the visuals do then react to the notes played - and that can be fun to watch. He made sure to tell us, also, that not only did he have cds available, but also prints of some of the visuals. Fair enough, it's a good angle. Anyway, it passed a pleasant hour.
Comments
Post a Comment