Harry Partch (1901-1974) was an iconoclastic American composer and instrument inventor with a passion for integrating musicians, actors, and dancers in large-scale works of total-theater. He was "seduced into carpentry" by his interest in just intonation and his need to have an orchestra tuned to this system. The instruments are more than just producers of tone, however — each one has an evocative name and dramatic physical presence, and each one puts unique physical demands on the performer. In Partch's book, Genesis of a Music, he writes that the performer of the Marimba Eroica should at times "convey the vision of Ben Hur in his chariot," while a musician playing his Kithara must not "bend at the waist, like an amateur California prune picker," but instead should move with grace and athleticism in a "functional dance."Charles Corey, curator of the instruments which are currently housed at the University of Washington in Seattle, gives a tour of the instruments and the unique sounds they make and iconoclastic musical notations which Partch invented for the performers to be able to play his compositions.This event was presented on May 30, 2017, by the Pacific Northwest Section of the Audio Engineering Society in the Studio Theater at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Washington in Seattle. Sincere thanks to their staffs and management for allowing us to be there.

 Resources Tab | from this studio:

• UNIQUE INSTRUMENTS | precedent
• GENRE | precedents
• COMPOSER | precedents
• HARRY PARTCH | videos
• LANDFILL HARMONIC | resource tab
• LANDFILL HARMONIC | precedents
• PINTEREST | inspirations
• WEBSITES | inspirations

Complete documentary originally broadcast on Radio 4. I love Delia.

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STRAD STYLE

1 h 45 min | Documentary | by Stefan Avalos | 2017

The film is based on a story as unlikely as it is true. Houck — a Columbus native, former funeral industry business owner and self-taught violin-maker obsessed with the mystique of great Italian violin-makers like Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri, del Gesù — meets Romanian concert violinist Razvan Stoica on Facebook.

With very little professional violin-making experience, Houck offers to make him a copy of Stoica’s dream instrument: the Guarneri violin, which previous owner and legendary violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini called “Il Cannone” (The Canon) for its powerful sound.

Stefan Avalos, a filmmaker working on a documentary about today’s great violin-makers, discovers Houck’s self-taught making through a mutual friend, visits him at his rural Ohio home, learns of his project to make a copy of one of the world’s most famous violins for a rising European concert artist and decides that Houck — not all those other violin-makers — should be the subject of his film.

Strad Style is born, wins the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Prize for Best Documentary Feature at the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival, becomes a hit and thrusts Houck from rural Ohio oblivion onto the international stage.

FULL LENGTH STREAMABLE HERE:

TUBI: https://tubitv.com/movies/507341/strad_style?

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