Mike;

I'm planning on doing a
quasi-participatory didactic thing with the audience to teach them
about granular synthesis as I demonstrate the instruments I've built,
so it's a little non-traditional as far as concert flow.

The times when I saw Michel Waisvisz play he performed like that, gradually shifting the focus from a talk to a concert. If done well it can solve a lot of the problems with non-traditional performance methods. I tried it a few times as well and while it's hard to come anywhere near Michel's level (I consider him to have been one of the great minds and performers in the history of electronic music) it's a underapreciated form.

Friendly hint; Prepare for a bit of disorientation after you played a bit and resume talking, in my experience it's a good idea to think of a first sentence to say after you stop playing right before you start.
 

Even if you won't be in the area, you might want to take a look
through my (spaghetti) code.  As Kassen can tell you, my attempts at
doing granular synthesis in ChucK border on obsession and have spent a
long time trying to squeeze out as much performance while keeping it
as easy to program as possible.

I like obsessions (well, healthy obsessions). As I experienced that code the real obsession there isn't actually with the grains themselves but with your perspective on- and your control over them, which is of course a far more stimulating mental illness. Of what I've seen that code-base is one of the most interesting structures build in ChucK so far (my own code for long-term projects is very, very boring on a code level, I fear) so if I can vouch for anything it must be that those in the NYC area would have a great chance of seeing something very interesting at your performance.


There's a possibility that I'll document the show, so there might also
be video at some point.

I hope you'll find the time and attention to do that; I know how hard it can be to have to mind both your own performance and record at the same time. I have of late been very bad at that.

BTW, I hope you'll be writing on this list about those Spear files later as well. Word on the (rather imaginary) street has it that people are pushing for a official release to include the file IO. So far I only saw the design on the Wiki and if I'd have to go by that alone I see no chance for even parsing files in ChucK at all. File parsing should be exciting; if we can parse Spears files we should be able to parse (and remix) .ck files, then save and run them. For all it's pervesity (and quite likely because of it) I find that idea very hard to resist indeed.

Yours,
Kas.