'Mad Scientist of Music' to shake up Faculty Select Series Thursday

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Quirky American composer and electroacoustic-instrument builder Mark Applebaum will join the DePauw University Percussion Ensemble, student soloists and faculty guests for an evening of his original works in Kresge Auditorium Thursday, April 23 at 7:30 p.m.

The Faculty Select concert includes performance of scores with curiosity-inducing titles like "The Metaphysics of Notation" (the full score of which is 72 feet wide), "Echolalia" and "Composition for Machine No.1."

Mark Applebaum, known as the "Mad Scientist of Music," joins the DePauw Percussion Ensemble, student soloists and faculty guests, for an evening of his original works in Kresge Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

When confronted with a piece of experimental music, Applebaum, a professor of music composition at Stanford, asks: "Is it music? This is not the important question. The important question is, is it interesting?"

Audience members will hear visual art become sound, see a piece of music that involves no sound at all, experience a work for solo performer of American Sign Language and become enveloped in Applebaum's unique percussive soundscape.

The unconventional, but well-known, composer is also active as a jazz pianist and has concertized from Sumatra to the Czech Republic, most recently performing a solo recital in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso sponsored by the American Embassy.

At present he performs with his father, Robert Applebaum of Chicago, in the Applebaum Jazz Piano Duo. Their first recording, "The Apple Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree," is available on Innova.

At Stanford, Applebaum also serves as the founding director of the Stanford Improvisation Collective. To learn more, about his quest to combat boredom in new music, watch his 2012 TedxStanford talk: www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/mark_applebaum_the_mad_scientist_of_music.html.

General admission to the Faculty Select Series concert is $3. Tickets for all students, seniors and youth are free thanks to season sponsors Judson and Joyce Green. For tickets, visit www.depauw.edu/music/tickets or stop by the GCPA box office (605 S. Locust St.).

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