Janek Schaefer has just been named British Composer of the Year for Sonic Art, with his interactive work “Extended Play: Triptych for the child surviors of war and conflict“.

In the installation, different portions of Schaefer’s composition are played on nine retro record players playing at various speeds. Schaefer and collaborator Michael Jennings wrote “Extended Play” for cello, piano and violin. When viewers step in front of the three circles of turntables set atop pages of the musical score, sensors stop the record for five seconds, making viewers part of the exhibit and constantly extending the play of the composition.

“The piece is very layered and deep on life, love and death and how lucky we all are,” Schaefer said, whose composition for “Rapture,”  a world dance tour on the roofs of architect Frank Gehry’s buildings choreographed by Noémie LaFrance, is currently touring. His idea for “Extended Play” was inspired by the sharp distinction between his two-year-old daughter’s relatively comfortable upbringing compared with his mother’s upbringing in 1940’s war-torn Warsaw, Poland. As a new parent, the distinction jarred him.

Click on the image to see Schaefer’s Extended Play Film

Schaefer first fell in love with vinyl after seeing English composer Philip Jeck’s “Vinyl Requiem” installation 12 years ago. The music medium soon became a source of professional and personal inspiration for Schaefer. Its resurgence does not surprise him. Ironically, it is vinyl’s imperfections that can make it more attractive than contemporary media’s compressed perfection. He expects to continue to draw inspiration from the medium.

“It’s like if humans were digital and perfection, we’d be all the same and boring,” he said. “But I think character is about flaws and we all pick up flaws throughout life, whether it’s lines on our face or mistakes we make. Those add to your character and tell us who we are.”

“Extended Play” is on display at the Huddersfield Art Gallery in Great Britain as a striking, two-room installation piece.

The cool-looking retro record players used in the installation Schaefer got from Crosley Radio, a company that thrives in the recent vinyl renaissance and manufactures a wide variety of retro wooden turntables. Check them out here.

Tags: Composer of the Year, Crosley Radio, Extended Play, Janek Schaefer, Turntables

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Vinyl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.