Enniv Zarf, piano August 1 @ 2 pm

Have you missed Enniv?

I know I have! The seemingly irrepressible Second Life artist simply wore himself out with all his activities in two worlds. I don't know of anyone in SL that has been more active. Enniv composes, performs, hosted an SL television program, did machinama and was an important part of the SL Shakespeare company.... phew makes me tired just listing the things he has been involved with.

After a two month break Enniv's back and I am so pleased that--while he's determined to cut back for the sake of his own health and sanity-- he has agreed to perform on Music Island.

Everytime Enniv has brought a project to Music Island, it has been something new and exciting. The last time Enniv performed at Music Island, he wanted to be inspired by the audience. I found a collaborative online writing site SKRBL and we were able to project the collaborative writing onto the screen for Enniv to relate to musically.

Previously Enniv has worked with particle artists, sculptors and photographers to create events that push the limits far beyond what is possible in real life.

What is his plan for August 1? Join us and see.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Enniv Zarf/Paul Kwo has studied piano since he was five and he has received a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano and a Master of Music in Composition from the University of Southern California.

He has studied composition with Frank Ticheli, Tamar Diesendruck and David Fick; piano, with Norman Krieger, Lucinda Carver, Francois Regnat and Charles Fierro; Jazz voice, with Matt Falker; Jazz piano, with Russ Ferrante. He has also had the opportunity to work with Bernard Rands, Steven Hartke, Menachem Wiesenberg, David Tcimpidis and Chen Yi. Paul has also studied acting with Joseph Hacker, Jack Rowe, Michael Keenan, Palmer Fuller and Jan Hennigan, and playwriting with Velina Houston.

As a composer, his piece Nanking 1937- recieved the Jimmy McHugh Composition Prize, Endowed by Lucille Meyers at USC. The piece also was placed among the top seven by the New York Youth Symphony's 2006 First Music Competition receiving a special recognition. Also in 2005 Paul's Ancient Sacrament for the Organic Machine was placed among the top seven by NYYS's 2005 First Music competition. The piece led him to be a finalist in the 2004 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards . Furthermore, ERM Media's has awarded his Ancient Sacrament for the Organic Machine to be included in their 'Masterworks of the New Era' Volume Ten, recorded with the Kiev Philharmonic to be released in 2007. Even while he was a senior in Gabrielino High School , Paul was given the opportunity to provide the arrangement of the Alma Mater for the Band. His symphonic poem Maganddore was accepted by USC's New Music for Orchestra concert in 2006. His music was also performed at the Society of Composer Inc. Region VI Conference at Rice University Syzygy Concert (New Music at Rice) 2006, and his solo piano work Surge has been performed by Chenny Gan at Wintergreen Performing Arts on February 25, 2006 at Wintergreen, Virginia, and has been recorded and released on her 2006 Solo Piano Album.

His career as a pianist has allowed him to perform several of his own compositions at various venues. In addition, he has performed under the batons of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Larry Livingston, Robert Reynolds, Carl St. Clair, Shelly Berg, Don Crockett and Timothy Su, and alongside Yo-Yo Ma and Chinese singer Wei Wei. He is also very active as a pianist and teacher in Southern California.

He is currently working in Los Angeles as an Actor/Filmmaker/Musician/Educator along with being inside the virtual world of Second Life as the above along as an Entrepreneur and Visual Artist.

Audience Words inspire live composition process

SUCCESSFUL PAIRING OF COLLABORATIVE WRITING TOOL WITH COMPOSITION MAKES MAY 16 CONCERT/WORKSHOP SOAR!

Over a period of about an hour, 45 separate individuals contributed the words that inspired a stream-of-consciousness live composition as created and played on acoustic piano by Paul Kwo, (Enniv Zarf in Second Life). The young composer/musician has been the spark-plug behind many innovative artistice projects in second life. Never before (to my knowledge) have any of this projects involved so many collaborators at one time.

A few audience members with slower computers were frustrated by inability to see the words displayed on screen as quickly as they might have wished and some others struggled to discover how to adjust their preferences and controls to play a streamed URL inworld. But most audience members delighted as they saw their shared words fill the screen and the interplay of music and words that made for a meditative stream of collective consciousness.

The beta application http://www.skrbl.com proved to be a good fit for the task of collaborative writing in Second Life in any context, although in pre-concert testing we did note that the draw function was still too slow saving in our trials--too slow for a rapid-fire collaborative arts project in real-time.

On the whole though, this was a successful, leading edge endeavour that suggests further ways of involving audiences in future creative projects.

Enniv plays "Concerto for piano and your words"

Enniv Zarf (Paul Kwo in RL)
Saturday May 16
11 am SLT
Music Island

Enniv has consistently been one of the most energetic, prolific and creative voice in Second Life Music. The California-based composer has collaborated with photographers, visual artists and particle scripters to bring memorable artistic events to Music Island audiences. Now he will be collaborating with the audience!

Using the new collaborative writing tool Etherpad, audience members will be able to collaboratively write poetry viewable on big screens set up surrounding the amphitheatre on Music Island. As ideas come to individuals they will be able to add or edit the poem in process. Meanwhile, Enniv will be viewing the collaborative writing in real time and responding to the creative process with his own musical responses.

It will truly be a Concerto for piano and your words.

Music Island Concerts that were "not possible in real life"

One of the most compellingly important uses of Second Life has been for the execution of art that is not possible in real life. I have recently been introduced to a wonderful blog by SL resident Bettina Tizzy, who has made it a mission to celebrate all the art that is not possible in real life. And sources on the web that define SL, such as Wikipedia, ABC news, and numerous university virtual orientation presentations all cite the ability to create that which is not possible in real life as one of the truly intriguing features of virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Before Kate Miranda's first rez day in February 2006, I had been hearing about the potential for unique content-creation through participation in Howard Rheingold's "Brainstorms" community. Rheingold, the inventor of the term "SmartMobs" in his 1980's book of the same name has long been ahead of the curve. Last year he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation award for his educational work in Second Life. Howard was the first person for whom LindenLabs created an avatar with his own name and appearance for a 2006 interview in Second Life. His enthusiasm for the creative and educational potential of Second Life, first drew me to explore virtual reality and to see for myself what could be accomplished that which was impossible or elusive in real life.

At Music Island, which customarily presents a mixture of classical music, early music and new music, we have occasionally presented multimedia events that could not have happened in quite the same way outside of the virtual world.

Notable among these events was a series of collaborations between Second Life sculptor Gwen Carillon and Composer/Pianist Enniv Zarf (Paul Kwo). The three concerts were increasingly challenging to both artists. In the first concert, June 28, 2008, Enniv improvised on pre-composed themes inspired by a series of works by the artist. The finale of the concert involved the audience who were invited to have their avatars enter and become part of the concluding sculpture. The interactive work "Re-birth" won a "best in Second Life" award later in the same year. Enniv later released a CD of the concert recorded on that day.


In October 2008, the duo upped the ante in their collaboration entitled "Drawing Down", named after one of the works in the sculpture series, but also was a fitting description of their process. Enniv had not seen any of the works before beginning his improvisational music. Sculptor Gwen Carillon installed the sculptures floating above the island out of sight lines and drew down one at a time as seemed appropriate to her as part of the stream of collaborative creation.



In the final concert of the tryptych, Gwen Carillon live-sculpted a work inspired by Enniv's music. This was a first time for the sculptor to sculpt in live-time before an audience.

One of the most amazing "not possible in real life" concerts was a collaboration between composer, Paul Kwo and particle artist, Kala Pixie. The audience was elevated more than 700 meters into the air on revolving seats on a slowly turning platform. A grand piano appeared to circle them like a small planet. Meanwhile the particle artist live scripted the behaviour of particles in response to the music. A steady stream of computer coding scrolled up the page as the particle artist wrote and tweaked code to colour and change the nature of the virtual light show.

Truly amazing to experience music from deep within a responsive fireworks show.