July 19, 2011, Greencastle, Ind. — Seth Tsui, a May 2011 graduate of DePauw University, will be featured in tomorrow's Greencastle Summer Music
Festival concert. Tsui, a classical trombonist, rock singer and audio
engineer, will join guitarist and singer-songwriter Michael Kelsey in the 7:30 p.m. program at Gobin Memorial United
Methodist Church. The performance is presented free of admission charge and is open to the public.
"Seth and Michael are two of the most amazing creative musicians I know," Eric Edberg, professor of music at DePauw and founder and director of the festival, tells the Banner-Graphic. The newspaper notes, "Since both performers make frequent use of 'looping' devices, in which passages of music are recorded in real time and repeated while additional layers are added, the concert has been titled 'Interlooping.' The program is another experiment in diversifying the programming of the summer festival, now in its seventh season."
"My biggest professional interest is how classical musicians and
institutions can engage new, and younger, audiences while maintaining
artistic
integrity,"says Professor Edberg. "While on sabbatical this spring in New York, I discovered that for many
musicians and audiences, especially under 35, the distinctions between
musical genres, like 'classical' and 'rock' and 'blues' and 'folk,' have
lost their validity. So in programming this summer's concerts, I've
been experimenting with combining genres." (photo at right: Tsui and legendary musician/producer Todd Rundgren in DePauw's recording studio; April 8, 2009)
The article states, "Tsui is one of an emerging class of musicians merging performance, composition and audio engineering. He performs as both a classical trombonist and a rock singer with his band, Addictive Stranger. He also owns his own recording company, Melting Skies Audio. During this concert, he will be playing his acclaimed composition, Ghosts of Extinct Elephants for Trombone and Electronics, as well as showcasing his looping abilities in several rock numbers and demonstrating his vision for the trombone as a 21st-century instrument." Tsui, who was a music performance major, will also be accompanied on one number by pianist Claude Cymerman, Siegesmund Professor of Music at the DePauw School of Music.
Read more at the newspaper's website.