Chicago Tribune Previews "Hypochondriac" for Frequency Festival

"What differentiates man from machine? In this percussion duo’s set, the distinction gets slippery. John Corkill and Adam Rosenblatt debut two new pieces by composers Julie Zhu and David Bird, who both use cutting-edge technology to dramatic effect. Zhu, a painter before she turned her focus to music, previously trained an AI model to predict shapes based on the sound they made as they’re drawn. Her Frequency Festival premiere, “amanuensis,” takes the same cues. The performers draw and write on a 4-by-4-foot wooden plank with charcoal; all the while, contact mics at each corner of the plank amplify the surface sounds on four correlating speakers in the Constellation space. “The audience will hear it like they’re sitting on top of the board,” says Corkill. Meanwhile, Bird’s “Hypochondriac” casts Rosenblatt as a Frankensteinish automaton and Corkill as his surgeon. Sensor pads hidden under Rosenblatt’s clothes allow both musicians to trigger Bird’s sound design through movement and touch. “There’s a sequence of actions we have to take, but we have a little bit of flexibility in how we pace it,” Rosenblatt says."

Performing on a bill with pianist Mabel Kwan, 8:30 p.m. Feb. 19 at Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave.; tickets $20.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/02/12/frequency-festival-2025/