Date & Time: Thursday 17th June 2021 6pm UK / 7pm Berlin / 10am LA / 1pm NYC

In this live stream we’ll talk with Dan Tepfer and hear more about his project Natural Machines.

In an age of unprecedented technological advancement, Dan Tepfer is changing the definition of what a musical instrument can be. Featured in an NPR documentary viewed by 1.5 million people, Dan Tepfer shows his pioneering skill in this concert by programming a Yamaha Disklavier to respond in real time to the music he improvises at the piano while another computer program turns the music into stunning animated visual art. Called “fascinating and ingenious” by Rolling Stone, the Natural Machines performance lives at a deeply unique intersection of mechanical and organic processes, making it “more than a solo piano album… a multimedia piece of contemporary art so well made in its process and components and expressed by such a thoughtful, talented, evocative pianist… that it becomes a complete experience” (NextBop).

Music Hackspace YouTube 

Overview of speaker

Dan Tepfer is a French-American jazz pianist and composer.

One of his generation’s extraordinary talents, Dan Tepfer has earned an international reputation as a pianist-composer of wide-ranging ambition, individuality, and drive—one “who refuses to set himself limits” (France’s Télérama). The New York City-based Tepfer, born in 1982 in Paris to American parents, has performed around the world with some of the leading lights in jazz and classical music, and released ten albums of his own.

Tepfer earned global acclaim for his 2011 release Goldberg Variations / Variations, a disc that sees him performing J.S. Bach’s masterpiece as well as improvising upon it—to “elegant, thoughtful and thrilling” effect (New York magazine). Tepfer’s newest album, Natural Machines, stands as one of his most ingeniously forward-minded yet, finding him exploring in real time the intersection between science and art, coding and improvisation, digital algorithms and the rhythms of the heart. The New York Times has called him “a deeply rational improviser drawn to the unknown.”

Tepfer’s honors include first prizes at the 2006 Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition, the 2006 East Coast Jazz Festival Competition, and the 2007 American Pianists Association Jazz Piano Competition, as well as fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2014), the MacDowell Colony (2016), and the Fondation BNP-Paribas (2018).