127 studies on a single orchestrion Paul Dresher Ensemble

An orchestrion is a band in a box, a huge cabinet with a player piano and other automatic instruments inside--including hanging drums and triangles, a pipe organ, a violin, and a xylophone that plays like a machine gun. The paper song roll sends pneumatic commands through the web of wires, tubes, and triggers that cover each instrument. An orchestrion plays at one volume: loud. 

127 studies is based on Madam Pearl, an orchestrion from the 1920s that I saw at the auction of the Miles Musical Museum in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. In my piece, the sounds of Madam Pearl are mixed with the sounds of an automatic calliope from a roadside stand in Sikeston, Missouri. Both machines play the same song--the Old Piano Roll Blues, a song about a song. Two lovers sit on a player piano bench, pumping the pedals with their feet and singing "I wanna hear it again, I wanna hear it again." Each time the song roll goes around, the two people get closer, until the piano collapses out of exhaustion.

Through a ritual of repetition, counting, and ordering, I wanted to make the Dresher ensemble as visible as an orchestrion, its wires and boxes into pulleys and triggers, the score and headphones a kind of piano roll that blows air through them.

Many thanks to performance poet Emily XYZ for her voice.