Mechanical, but original
  Orchestra and museum pieces make beautiful music together
  Monday, May 14, 2007
  By Ben Finane, for the [New Jersey] Star-Ledger

  Saturday night's concert by the Colonial Symphony at Morristown's
Community Theatre featured a delightful world premiere that married
orchestral music with music produced by mechanical instruments, all
thanks to a curious collaboration between a conductor, a composer
and a museum.

  The project took root when maestro Paul Hostetter, music director
of the Colonial Symphony, visited Morristown's Morris Museum and was
inspired by the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of mechanical instruments,
which have been on display since late 2003.

  The exhibit, unique to the Western Hemisphere, features music boxes,
mechanical instruments and automata (mechanical figures) built in the
19th century, used largely by wealthy Europeans as parlor entertainment
before the rise of the recording industry.  There are 700 pieces in the
collection, 60 of which are currently on display, and the museum is
currently constructing a new wing (set to open this November) in order
to showcase more.

  Following Hostetter's visit to the museum, the Colonial Symphony
commissioned composer Norman Lowrey to create a work that would
achieve, in the words of Hostetter, "true collaboration" between the
mechanical instruments and the orchestral players.

  Lowrey, who chairs the music department at Drew University, visited
the museum's collection and decided that the large size and fragility
of the instruments rendered their use on stage impractical at best.
Instead, Lowrey created a film of the instruments in action and then
wrote music for orchestra to be played along with that of the mechanical
instruments.  At Friday night's premiere of "Orchestrophonia", the film
was projected on a screen behind the orchestra in 5.1 surround sound
and two "live" music boxes from the museum's collection joined the
orchestra.

  "Orchestrophonia" unequivocally achieves the spirit of collaboration
that Hostetter had hoped for between orchestral and mechanical
instruments, primarily because the latter are treated as musical equals.
The piece is not so much a concerto as an homage to these instruments,
which, long silent, are able to share their tunes once more.

  Lowrey's orchestral writing supports the tone of each of the featured
mechanical instruments, which range from nostalgic to carnivalesque to
Sgt. Pepper-esque.  The ideas and tunes are of course literally expanded,
but the songs also overlap, creating not so much a soundscape as a
gentle dreamscape.  The result is a commendable and thoughtful piece.

[snip]

More at http://www.nj.com/starledger/stories/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-1/117911703181570.xml&coll=1

Robbie Rhodes, MMDigest