By Janelle Gelfand
The Cincinnati Enquirer

IF YOU GO

What: Sound Collaborations, a concert of multimedia works by Mara Helmuth, with jazz musician Rick VanMatre; Brave Old World accordionist Alan Bern, pipa player Ming Ke, Allen Otte (Percussion Group Cincinnati) and NeXT Ens electro-acoustic ensemble When: 8 p.m. Tuesday Where: Black Box Theater, Contemporary Arts Center, downtown Tickets: $5; free with student ID. 345-8405

"I hope that the audience will be thrown into different worlds and be amazed by the colors and sounds," says Mara Helmuth, composer and director of the Center for Computer Music at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Helmuth will present her own music in multimedia collaborations Tuesday in the new performance space at the Contemporary Arts Center.

Each of Helmuth's works was inspired by performers, by personal experiences and by her own curiosity.

They merge the computer-generated and acoustic sounds of the accordion, wind and string instruments, as well as the exotic Chinese pipa and the Ghanian xylophone. There's also a visual element: a light sensor system and video will accompany the music.

Helmuth was inspired to write for Ming Ke, a virtuoso of the pipa, a Chinese lute, after spending a two-month sabbatical last year in China. As a backdrop for Mountain Wind, a piece for pipa, five wind players and computer, she has created a video from her own pictures.

"I wanted to do what the pipa could do, and bring that into the world of technology and the computer," she says.

She describes Smoke, a piece she is composing for CCM saxophonist and director of jazz studies Rick VanMatre, as "smoky layers going up." The interactive work will include VanMatre performing live, Helmuth's computer performance and Anna Socha VanMatre's nine graphite paintings, In Time In Between, created for the event.

For accordionist Alan Bern of the well-known klezmer group Brave Old World, Helmuth composed a piece combining accordion sounds with an interactive light sensor system.

For a CCM ensemble called NeXT Ens, she was inspired to write The Edge of Noise - "the little bit of noise that's just on the edge of the sound," she says

Helmuth also co-wrote a piece with Allen Otte of Percussion Group Cincinnati. Gyil Music, a work for the gyil (Ghanian xylophone), was inspired by sculptures of Nigerian-born artist Felix Eboigbe.

"That's what this whole concert is about," says Helmuth, "working together with people who are so interesting, and bring me something that I couldn't possibly do alone."

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com