Press release
06.03.2009 - Sennheiser UK
Sennheiser Adds Mystery and Audio to The Memory of WT Stead
In late January 2009, six performances of The Memory of WT Stead were made at Steinway Hall in London. These unique performances by artists Lundahl & Seitl and experimental pianist Cassie Yukawa, immersed their small audiences in worlds of darkness, storytelling and music, all the while exploring the unique geography and contents of the workshops and recital rooms behind the scenes at the great piano maker’s flagship store.
Exploring the alliances of watching and listening, sound and physical performance, and music within the space of its resonance, The Memory of W.T.
Stead (WT Stead was a famous Victoria journalist and reformer who died on the Titanic) relies upon déjà-vu, rotation and echo. The work reflects its musical linchpin, the transcription for piano of Bach’s Fugue in A Minor.
Like Bach’s composition and the expanding spiral of its structure, The Memory of W.T. Stead deliberately warps the listener/viewer’s sense of space and duration.
Sennheiser was an essential part of the process, providing twelve sets of Series 5 headphones for the small audiences. The high quality audio of these headphones enabled Lundahl & Seitl to blur the lines between recorded and live sound, making a dramatic experience even more immersive.
"Our specific need was a pair of headphones with open backs, which would not isolate the visitors from natural spatial sound and the live piano play, and also gave us the best binaural playback," explained Christer Lundahl. "In the beginning of the project we were researching binaural and 3-D sound and found a website called ‘binaural source’. For the best headphones to play out a binaural recording on, they recommended Sennheiser’s 5 Series."
The effect of testing the Series 5 headphones was evident. "It changed everything immensely," added Martina Seitl. "For this particular piece we wanted to use sound and the sense of hearing to animate the visitors’ sense of being situated in a space and via the tight connection between memory and imagination suspend their sense of time in-between past, present and future. For example, in the performance: some of the visitors were experiencing the instantaneous sound he/she made from, for example, walking up a staircase and then later on in the performance being instructed to remember this event in time juxtaposed with the high quality binaural sound, from a first person perspective, of walking up that very staircase."
Sennheiser was involved in the production process too as, after being approached by Lundahl & Seitl with enquiries about the headphones, Sennheiser UK’s Technical Support Manager John Willett (well known for his magic touch in the field of piano recordings) was sufficiently intrigued to volunteer his considerable expertise for the project. Armed with Nagra VI hard disk recorder, a Jecklin Disk and a pair of Sennheiser MKH omni microphones he recorded all the piano parts and large part of the effects and speech used in the event.
"I went down to Steinway Hall about a week before the project to record various bits," explains Willett. "The footsteps, a lot of the voices and the piano were all recorded by me. I remember Christer telling me that the test audiences didn’t believe what they were hearing was recorded sound. It genuinely sounded like people were in the room with the audience playing pianos."
"The recording session we made with John was absolutely amazing," agreed Lundhal. "John has a sense for making natural sound, sound natural, and we learnt lots of simple principles in audio recording. Apart from a really professional playback sound, the session inspired us as artists, giving us ideas on how to manipulate perceptio n of time space and objects by the effect of a high quality sound."
For more information on the work of Lundahl & Seitl please visit www.lundahl-seitl.com.
For more information about Sennheiser please visit www.sennheiser.co.uk or call:
Matthew
Swee tapple, Sennheiser Pro PR
T: 07956 137 541
E-mail: matthew@sweetapple.co.uk