Why should a virtuoso pianist—who’s trained a lifetime to master an instrument—to feel, create, transmit, and evolve the art of music (among other things)—be forced to turn manuscript pages during a super-challenging performance? Does the musician prefer this super-sudden tactile contact and symbolic dance with the leaves of musical notation? Perhaps performers and audiences alike enjoy the showmanship? Sure, the gesture is purist, traditional, dramatic, and adds to the audience’s experience and appreciation; sure, works can be memorized. But what if the page could be “turned” without demanding lightning-reflex interruptions of keyboard super-dexterity? Could this eventually free the musician to increase levels of performance through a new, more fluid kind of sight-reading?

Could sheet music be replaced by an intelligent projection or holograph of the musical score? Sheet music and sight-reading are quintessential, classical aspects of musical performance, but could an intelligent, mediated version of sheet music, either read in the traditional manner using non-traditional media, or read via some brain-machine interface, help the live musician achieve new levels of performance? Does this technology already exist? In the spirit of EMPAC’s mission to generate innovation, I offer my positive experience here to stimulate further conversation.

Kevin Thayer