By Cory La Neave Jones

August 7, 2024

One of this generation’s extraordinary talents, Dan Tepfer has earned an international reputation as a pianist-composer of wide-ranging innovation, individuality, and drive—one “who refuses to set himself limits” (France’s Télérama). What he is really known for, is being a monstrously maniacal ‘mains’ manipulator (‘mains’ is French for hands). He is also a brainy astrophysicist.

Take his recent YouTube post on the Pythagorean Tetractys, which is just a number series set in the geometric form we can all recognize as a triangle. But in this case, it is four levels of a counting system that descends by multipliers of two to the left and by three to the right.

Tepfer adroitly explains that another numerical wiz named Johannes Sebastian Bach (not the lead singer from the 80’s hair band Skid Row, the other one), figured out that you can use this number series to tune your instrument because with a perfectly placed numerical modification, the number series provides many harmonious scales. It turns out that mathematicians could not figure out this modification for centuries dating back to 300s B.C.

If this stuff interests you, check out his blog HERE.

Tepfer grew up in France to American parents and studied two life-styles, one as a brainy astrophysicist, for which he earned his bachelors degree from the University of Edinbrugh, and the other as a jazz pianist, for which he received his masters of fine arts degree from the New England Conservatory in Beantown, Mass.

It turns out that both Dan and Johannes loved improvisations and agree that it is one of the most important elements of the art form of music.  In a former piece, Mr. Tepfer put his own spin on the old Inventions by the old Yo himself (my shorthand for Johannes). Not only that, it appears that Mister Science, Math, and Jazz Hands also started writing new algorithms for his fancy piano that incorporates AI technology to create a rhythmic response to a series of inputs from the keyboard, he also has this call and response presented in real-time to his audiences such that what he essentially created was a musical conversation with his “cyber-kinetic” self. 

Now, I’m not saying that if the code itself is really into his particular improv that this will turn into some kind of Ex-Machina-human-jazz-hands-computer-love-affair, but it most certainly will be an interesting event for humans, cyborgs, and egg-heads to observe.

So I asked Chat GPT in the prompt about this. What Chat GPT actually told me was that:

“Tepfer used OpenAI’s MuseNet, an earlier version of AI tech, to rearrange Bach’s Inventions. MuseNet is a deep neural network that can generate four-minute musical compositions with ten different instruments, and it was used to explore and create various styles of music…”

Whoa?!

And I was just joshing there.

This lead me to my next prompt:

Prompt: “Does this mean that music is dead?”

Chat GPT:

“No, the creation of original music is far from dead. While AI can generate music, it serves as a tool that complements human creativity rather than replacing it….”

[sigh]

Friedrich Nietzsche is now spinning in his grave.

Speaking of this interesting droid-savant keyboardist, he has a show coming up that you will not want to miss.

It’s taking place as part of La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest.

Two (2) shows on Thursday August 15, 2024. This takes place in an intimate cabaret-style setting of The JAI at The Conrad in La Jolla.

I asked about the dress code, for those of you wondering, and they said that you can feel free to put on your best tux or flannel, ladies may wear evening gowns and their tallest stilettos or beach attire and their softest Haviana sandals. The choice is yours, however, the word on the street is that most people arrive business casual for this business time.

Come out and see what the San Francisco Classical Voice calls “a delight to hear and behold” and what I call A Sensation from the Nation of my Cyborg Brother-husband’s prompt-lead re-invention of old classics that will be sure to get you to move your feet and re-consider if you should have taken that online class on cognitive behavioral emotional artificial intelligence quotients already.

I’m not going to say that this performance is definitely going to “take you to Church,” but you may find yourself in need of a witness by the time you’re done harmonizing with this intricately programmed artificial call-and-response sequence to Tepfer’s asymmetrical tonal improvisations. Take my word for it, this is no deep fake. The man, the myth, the legend, the cyborg – part man, part cybernetic computer piano program – is planning to be in the building for an awesome eve.