Name: Ping-Pong Player Piano by Steven Vinkenoog
Duration: 7 min 58 s
Description: Sound installation, for a piano, an electric fan, one ping pong ball and three boomboxes playing cd-r’s at random.

Written for and performed by the Miyabi Duo (Hugh Millington and Saki Kato) at Wigmore Hall on 4 June 2021. Commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society as part of its 2020/21 RPS Composers Programme.

A work in two movements:
1. bend
2. lullaby for the end/ beginning

in memory of Uncle Charlie

same but different (2021)

"Oblique Motions II" (2013) by Aaron Lockhart

Rachel Minto, flute
Aaron Lockhart, piano

This piece is the second in a series of works that derives its title from an aspect of species counterpoint in which one voice moves while the other remains static. In this case, the flute has numerous iterations of B in three octaves while the piano plays around it in different registers. The soft dynamic and slow pacing is meant to draw your attention to the sustained sonorities of the piano and the quality of the vibrations that are produced when the flute enters. 



Oblique Motions II

Commissioned and performed by Prague Quiet Music Collective

Part of a project called 'Five Uncertain Situations' with Prague City Gallery. Exhibition and concert at Dům U kamenného zvonu (Stone Bell House), Old Town Square, Prague in December 2022.

Bass clarinet - Anna Paulová
Baritone electric guitar - Ian Mikyska
Violin - Milan Jakeš
Double bass - Luan Goncalves

Mixed by Juraj Mišejka

This piece was written in response to a set of photograms from Aleksandra Vajd’s The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, which features two parallel lines, each changing colour halfway. To me this work is about things in flux, things moving toward or away from something else. In my piece, I am interested in how players might focus on periods of instability and change within and between sounds. By leaving the score more open, I hope to provide more space for the players to follow their curiosity and their ears, to be responsive to the sounds and to each other in the moment. - SL

"Sylvia’s piece is a rare occurrence: a simple, relatively undefined score that does not provide instructions for formal development over the entirety of the piece, yet immediately, the first time we rehearsed it, it was clear that the piece had a clear-cut character and a complex web of internal relationships. The simplicity and directness of Vajd’s photograms is here transformed into a focus on all the chaotic and noisy shadows, interferences, and byproducts that appear when players are tasked with exploring well-chosen, fluctuating effects and various transitions between them. Here, instability is always present at multiple levels — perhaps we could even speak of an interaction between instabilities, a dusty sonic layer covering the simple material play of the photograms." - Ian Mikyska

Overlapping Transformations (2022)

first performance

Huw Morgan, organ

mainly slow organ music
All Saints Clifton, Bristol (UK)
April 15, 2023

Dante Boon - (Huw) (2023)

Sound installation, for a piano, an electric fan, one ping pong ball and three boomboxes playing cd-r’s at random. 

Ping-Pong Player Piano

The prepared piano becomes a celestial canvas as magnetic whispers guide the notes, weaving a love story through cosmic vibrations.

Aphrodite on the Moon

Performed (by me) at All Souls' Church, Leeds, July 16, 2024.

Originally composed for Huw Morgan, Huw's (lovely) performance available via Mainly Slow Organ Music on Bandcamp.

Pipe Organ Study 1 (2023)

Altars

Dotted Lines is a stopwatch-based piece for four sustaining instruments. Players choose two pitches, one high and one low, and are assigned dots, lines, or silence for each section. 

This version was performed with four electric guitars by Aaron Michael Butler, Ryan Carraher, Carlos Cotallo Solares, and Peter Tracy.

Dotted Lines, November 13th, 2024 at Vermillion

A 7-minute excerpt of a 72-minute recording of my 2024 solo piano piece titled "ending.beginning.interludes", to come out on edition wandelweiser records at the end of this year or early next. Might end up sharing the whole thing prior to. 

This was sort of my return to composition, at least publicly. Thanks to those who told me and showed me I didn't have to go it alone.   

Recorded and produced at The Studios at Linden Oaks in Rochester, NY

Pen sketch by yours truly

ending.beginning.interludes (excerpt)

A solo piano piece built out of a combination of four chords I couldn't stop playing and in which I kept hearing new layers. Performed sensitively here by friend and artist Frederik Donche at the music for a while series in Arnhem, Netherlands. 

Pen sketch by yours truly

practice

Steven Vinkenoog (Haarlem 1970) is a composer, sound artist and guitarist from the Netherlands. 
He went to an awful lot of art schools, institutes and universities, and has been playing in bands since the early eighties. 
Somewhere in the year 2000 he started making guitar based sound installations, which eventually resulted in making open ended scores with an interest in improvisation and process music, very much aware of the social aspects of playing music together.
You might also know him as one half of the musical slapstick duo Donné et Desirée.

Ping-Pong Player Piano

Steven Vinkenoog

Related tracks