Karaoke Etudes
Program note
five instrumental songs for soloists, ensemble, video and soundtrack.
“21st Century life is karaoke - a never-ending attempt to maintain dignity while a jumble of data uncontrollably blips across a screen.”
- Douglas Coupland.
“...In the conventional Karaoke form, the music is often a well-known pop song minus the lead vocal and lyrics are shown on a video screen, along with a moving symbol or changing color to guide the singer. These conventions are taken as a starting point for the creation of a video that functions both as visual information for the audience and as a score for the performers. The ontological levels of Karaoke: song - video - instrumental - performer - audience is expanded in these 'Etudes' to song - video - instrumental - performer - ensemble - audience. In this sense one level of audience becomes an active participant in the Karaoke performance...The lyrical content in the pieces is used playfully. To a certain extent I would expect an audience to guess the given song (there is always a sample used in the electronic layer) and therefore to have a relation with the lyrics that triggers a memory of the song itself...”
- Yannis Kyriakides