| Profile: Slow Six | |
 | Slow Six is an ensemble playing a unique brand of electronic chamber music. Comprised of guitars, strings, Rhodes piano, a laptop and video projections, Slow Six's sound reflects the instrumental virtuosity and compositional rigor of its members' classical training while harnessing the wide range of sound available to electro-acoustic instruments. |
| Composer, violinist, software designer and Slow Six founder Christopher Tignor programs custom audio applications that work to re-contextualize "computer music" as a live, performative experience. The group makes extensive use of digital signal processing by routing the sounds of their instruments into a laptop where the signals are transfigured into its own voice and rhetoric. Used live, this process transforms the computer from its limited role as mere playback device or sound effect generator into a full-fledged member of the ensemble. | 
|
|
Since its founding in 2000, Slow Six has performed in numerous venues in New York City. The group has received honors and support from organizations including the American Music Center, The Society for New Music and Meet The Composer.
Slow Six's debut CD, Private Times In Public Places, was chosen by Time Out New York magazine as one of the top 10 classical albums of 2004 and has received airplay on WFMU, WNYC's NEW SOUNDS, London-based THE CHILLER CABINET, WXPN's STAR'S END and the nationally syndicated public radio programs WEEKEND AMERICA and ECHOES. The album's three lengthy compositions conjure a slow, dreamy sound that reaches for a new melodic style of ethereal minimalism, but with a unique tension between structure and sentiment. | |
 | For their performance at The Gatherings Concert Series, Slow Six will include: Rob Collins (keyboard, percussion), Ben Lively (violin), David Berger (drums), Christopher Tignor (violin, software) and Stephen Griesgraber (electric guitar). An integral part of the ensemble's performance will be its collaboration with their visual artist and the dynamic imagery designed specifically for each piece and projected throughout the performance space. |
 Review : Private Times in Public Places by Slow Six:
This debut album from NYC electro-classical group Slow Six provides numerous glimpses into the interesting tone arising from classically-trained artists when they plug in and use computers to twist their music to its best advantage. As with so many purely instrumental works, the three pieces on Private Times in Public Places remind me of a soundtrack, or make me want to write a movie to accompany them. In fact, the visual aspects of music are a part of the group's performance aesthetic, which includes waves of color and light far more intriguing than the faces of the performers themselves. Even without knowing this, however, you may find yourself listening to this in the background, and suddenly feel yourself drawn into the texture of the music - and you are now standing on a desolate and chilly plain, winds howling about you as you look into the distance for a lost love. The compositions here follow many of the conventions of classical music, in particular bringing to mind Romantic rhapsodies and tone poems. But the spookiness of traditional instruments filtered through electric wires is unnerving, in the way that simply guitars are not. The cadences are slow, the notes drawn out. If you want a beautiful, tragic world to well up in your mind, give this a few spins. - Larissa Parson/Maelstrom Issue #28 December 2004 | |
| Slow Six make their Philadelphia concert debut on 28 October 2006 at The Gatherings Concert Series with New Orleans based drone pop duo Hi-Fi Sky. | |
Related Links:
| |
| Artists | |