Buzz Blog

This weekend, the Alliance Theater (602 E 500 E, Ste 101) is kicking off a new series, “Something New.” The debut event, featuring Carey Campbell, will take place this weekend, on Sunday, March 6, with a 6 pm start time. This free event will help mark the theater’s first year of existence in Trolley Square—which, of course, is a time period coinciding with the roiling challenges of COVID-19.

Run under a collaboration of Mundi Project and the Utah Arts Alliance, “the ‘Something New’ concert series is an experiential music event that has to be experienced live,” according to the Mundi Project. “For the premiere concert, Ogden composer Carey Campbell is presenting a new multimedia concert where technology and traditional instruments meet, joined by ambient lighting and projections that explores movement and texture while challenging audience members’ aural sense of timbre and rhythm. The concert invites audiences to actively listen and encourages reflectivity and introspection. Alliance Theater couldn’t be a more perfect fit for the show, with a history of highlighting the voices of Utah artists in a warm and inviting atmosphere.”

According to Campbell in an email interview—Department of Performing Arts Associate Chair and Professor of Music at Weber State University—the instrumentation will include “flute, cello, trumpet, and electronics. Most of the pieces are for some combination of those instruments. For one of the pieces with trumpet, though, the trumpet is live-processed, and creates some pretty interesting non-trumpet-sounding effects.

“In terms of my gear, I’ll be using traditional analog synths, an 80’s-style analog drum machine and bass synth, computer-generated sounds, samples, etc. A couple of the more out-there things are that I’ll be doing a No-Input Mixer improvisation (a mixer patched into itself multiple times, creating some pretty unpredictable sounds/noises), and I’ll be playing on an Omnichord, a mid-1980s electronic autoharp that sounds really cool when paired with some guitar pedals.”

Campbell adds that “the concert will feature some free improvisation, arrangements of a couple of rock songs, a piece for flute and electronic sounds, a quartet for trumpet/flute/cello/electronics, two fixed-media video pieces, and one piece for live electronics plus fixed-media. [Fixed-media means pre-recorded sounds.] The goal is to present a very wide range of styles and techniques. Most of the live pieces will be accompanied by video projection curated specifically to go in counterpoint with or, in some cases, contradict the music at hand.”

Almost needless to say, event attendees need to arrive with an open mind/ears. From there, Campbell will help guide the early evening’s program.

“I presented this concert at Weber State a couple of weeks ago,” Campbell says, “under the title ‘Unquiet Places.’ I think the unique (and perhaps challenging) thing for audiences will be the range of music presented. Some of it is literally controlled feedback noise, some of it will be hummable rock/pop music, and pretty much everything in-between. I’ll introduce each piece from the stage, telling the audience a bit about its origins, my vision for it, and a little of what to expect.”