DAN 
TEPFER

Following the critical and audience acclaim for his Goldberg Variations / Variations. Dan Tepfer released Inventions / Reinventions on StorySound Records in March 2023. It immediately entered the Classical Billboard Charts at #1, remaining there for two weeks.

“In “Inventions/Reinventions,” Tepfer boldly — even audaciously — supplies the “missing” nine inventions in the form of his own free improvisations.” New York Times — May 2021

Bach composed his set of “Inventions” as study pieces for his children and students, covering eight major and seven minor keys, for a total of fifteen. But there are twenty-four possible major and minor keys, so there are nine keys missing. In the “Inventions / Reinventions” program, while playing Bach’s original compositions sequentially, Dan Tepfer creates his own Inventions for the missing keys, freely improvising new ones during each performance. In so doing, he follows the logic behind Bach’s beloved original pieces, in which simple musical ideas, like characters in a novel or a play, are taken on a harmonic journey to foreign keys before returning home.

“One is struck by the playfulness Tepfer contrasts with Bach’s austerity in his pieces—the improvised Inventions are performed with tremendous ease…Tepfer’s work is the result of deepest engagement with and at the same time a bow to Grandmaster Bach.” Jazzthetik (Germany) – June 2023

Pre-Concert Lecture at 11AM:
(No Tickets Required)

From Bach to Natural Machines, algorithms as the shapers of music

Audiences often think of music as primarily a product of the heart, but pianist / composer / coder Dan Tepfer argues that algorithms — rules that are followed consistently — are just as important. Without constraints underlying creativity, whether they’re conscious or not, music tends to lack the deep structure that makes it timeless. In his newest project, Natural Machines, he’s taken this idea to the limit, programming rules into his computer that enable it to respond in real time to the music he improvises. The computer creates immediate structure around whatever he plays at the Yamaha Disklavier player piano, which in turn guides him to improvise in certain ways, for an unprecedented melding of natural and mechanical processes.

The idea of music living at the intersection of the algorithmic and the spiritual is far from new. It was Pythagoras who first codified the logic behind harmonic consonance. Renaissance composers such as Ockeghem created music that followed strict mathematical procedures. And Bach, whose Goldberg Variations Tepfer has been performing worldwide since the 2011 release of his album Goldberg Variations / Variations, in which he follows each of Bach’s variations with an improvised variation of his own, seemed to gain endless creative results from imposing constraints on himself.

Join Tepfer as he explains the deep connections between the high-tech Natural Machines, the timeless music of Bach, and the algorithms that support it all.

Run Time: 60 minutes, with no intermission.