Inventing His Own Musical Keys

Once a year, musician and performer Leon Gruenbaum ’85 breaks his strict vegan diet by eating a slice of pizza while surrounded by onlookers. Afterwards, he lowers a plastic mannequin leg from the roof of his New York apartment building in a ritual called “The Lowering of the Leg.”

He does it all in the name of art.

Last week, Gruenbaum made his first visit to Harvard as this year’s Peter Ivers Visiting Artist. He will work with students throughout the year, culminating in a performance with music and visuals slated for next spring.

Although Gruenbaum entered the art world through traditional music—he is a classically trained pianist and clarinetist—he now tends toward the abstract. “I got bored with classical, so I moved on to jazz. Then I got bored with that,” he said.

Acting on his desire to create new and exciting music, Greunbaum invented the world’s first relativistic keyboard, the Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee. “It’s my odd little contribution to society,” he said. The instrument, which he demonstrated during last week’s visit, is an ergonomic keyboard altered to produce electronic sounds as a MIDI controller. Instead of designating a specific note for each key, Gruenbaum designed the keys to correspond to intervals within a preset scale.

“This way you can play really fast,” he said, “but that isn’t the only reason for it. I was focusing on the rhythm of the line—the contour of the line when I made this. It’s actually hard to get used to, as a pianist. I need to start a kid on this young to see what it can really do.”

Gruenbaum has released several CDs and performed as a soloist and with various artists around the world. 2002’s Away features live recordings of his abstract pop band Math Camp, for which he composes, sings and plays Samchillian. He has also performed as a member of the Bad Spock Quartet, which consists of Gruenbaum and friends dressed in blue Starfleet uniforms and fake ears who sing purposefully out of tune.

For this year’s collaborative project with Harvard students, Gruenbaum has set no specifications. But he would like them to think about combining visual performance art and music.

“It’s important to explore the full range of possibility of what a performance is,” he said. “I realize this gives a lot of freedom, and that can be really hard. Sometimes having any kind of limitation actually helps you to create something.”

Gruenbaum encourages the incorporation of unusual elements such as a performing in an unconventional space, using aromas, inviting campus groups like the Din and Tonics or getting “normal” people involved.

“It’s a tricky thing to get somebody normal to do crazy things, but I like the contradiction. It’s like the actress in all the Marx Brothers movies. I heard she didn’t get any of the jokes. That comes out in the movies and it worked,” he said.

He said he is willing to take part in the performance in whatever capacity the students decide, whether it’s playing the Samchillian or dying his hair blue onstage. But despite Gruenbaum’s preference for wacky, avant-garde art, he said that he doesn’t want to force students to be “weird like me.”

“I see myself as the producer of the final show,” he said. “I hope to show you a few ideas about what more can be done.”

The production is part of the Office for the Arts’ Learning from Performers program, which brings renowned artists to Harvard.

Gruenbaum participated in the Learning from Performers program as a Harvard undergraduate and says he’s excited to be on the other side of the equation.

“The collaborative way of working has been a model for the Peter Ivers Visiting Artist program since the beginning,” said Tom Lee, who coordinates Learning from Performers. “The idea is to draw everyone’s ideas together to realize a performance.”

—Staff writer Sarah L. Solorzano can be reached at solorzan@fas.harvard.edu.