Rodney Oakes

Rodney Oakes: Music for MIDI Trombone

by AAJ Staff
March 1, 2001

Experimental in the broadest sense of the word, the music on Rodney Oakes' Music for MIDI Trombone ventures into new realms, both technological and artistic. Electronic treatment of the trombone is thus far something of an oddity in music. Oakes takes a broad approach to this challenge, using a pitch-dependent MIDI controller and introducing sparse independently-composed electronic accompaniment. He offers similar treatment to the alp horn, a 9-foot long Polish instrument which exists solely to play a solitary E note. ...