Eagle Finger, première

Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, Gent

Piano: Elisa Medinilla & Heloisa Amaral
Composition / concept / video montage: Frederik Croene
Camera: Gert Verboven
Recorded live at De Bijloke, Gent on Voyages au bout du Piano, 4.02.2017
This piece is a commission for De Bijloke Muziekcentrum

Concept:
Eagle Finger (Frederik Croene, 2017) is a meditation for piano duo and TV on how the mesmerizing powers of a screen disrupts the old skills of playing the piano. Putting a TV in front of a piano literally blocks most of the classical possibilities of using the keyboard. Learning how to live with this space taken away by the visual image is the goal of this composition. The title refers to a typing technique using only the two index fingers. Because the screen prevents the normal use of most of the keys, pianists have to confine to this primitive way of playing. The video is made by filming a TV-screen that feeds back that same image. The abstract sculpture like visuals are the result of zooming in and out of that feedback image. The soundtrack of the video is made solely by extreme sounds generated by the TV and the piano score, recorded and -again- being fed to the TV. Doing this seven times with the theme at the beginning results gradually in the erasing of the theme played seven times by the pianists, because of the distortions and feedback tones generated by the TV. On a meta level, the image on the screen could be interpreted as the attempt to try to look through the screen, through technology. The Droste Effect (the live setup is seen in a smaller version on the screen, in which again there is a smaller version, etc..) ultimately results in a white light core that is paralleled in the feedback tone. In the end of the piece, the screen itself tries to show what happened during the whole piece on the keys which it hides from sight.

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