Allen Otte
Allen Otte was in 1972 a cofounder of America’s first professional percussion ensemble, the Blackearth Percussion Group, and in 1979 of Percussion Group Cincinnati with whom he toured for decades throughout the world performing new and experimental music created for him and his colleagues. Otte now regularly appears as a soloist, including the presentation of his own creative work often in residencies centered around the theme of performing social justice; the evening-length work The Innocents, with John Lane, has toured nationally for some years. He is the regular percussionist with the medieval music group Trobar, and professor Emeritus, University of Cincinnati.
In 2017 Percussion Group Cincinnati was inducted into the International Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame.
Mark Applebaum, Composition Machine No. 1, 2014
Session Description:
One: display of previously drawn 2.5 x 6’ graphic score – interpretive performance of score.
Two: score is destroyed, becomes one of the objects placed upon and moved about on the 6’ table. (3’)
Three: final disposition of objects is traced onto the 2.5 x 6’ paper on the table – the new graphic score is mounted (1’)
Four: the newly created score (identifiably similar to the original) is mounted – an interpretive performance clearly different than the first reading. In my version, a “dance” with frame drum. (3’)
The specific rhythmic prescribed-by-Applebaum placing and moving about of objects on the table, the act of tracing them onto a sheet of paper, and finally the interpretation of this produced-on-the-spot graphic score as a “map” is an example of a unique composition – a collaboration between composer and any performer – of the expressive physical relationship of performer and sound objects.
Session Category:
- New Music/Research
Date:
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Time:
9:00 AM
Location:
Room 120
Session Type:
New Music/Research Presents
Session Format:
Live
