Sonami of Sound

The days of a musician standing passively behind a laptop while manipulating soundscapes for your entertainment are over: Laetitia Sonami creates a world of sound with but one hand. Her custom instrument, the Lady's Glove, is an opera glove loaded with microswitches, effects transducers, ultrasonic receivers and an accelerometer; as Sonami moves her hand, the glove generates data, which are then fed through a computer and processed as sounds mapped by her motion. Sonami describes her compositions with the Lady's Glove as "a landscape of objects that are being modified through gestures...but the objects are sounds." Saxophones, locomotives, rhythm tracks, percolating electrical melodies, symphonic noise — all spun from the hand of a woman in real time. Sonami performs at 7:30 p.m. at the Bastian Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of the St. Louis Community College — Forest Park. (5600 Oakland Avenue; 314-567-5384 or www.newmusiccircle.org) as the guest of the New Music Circle. Tickets are $6 to $12.
Sun., Dec. 2, 2007