Roberto Sierra, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, was recently highlighted by the Yamaha Corporation of America for his work, Concierto Virtual. Premiered in January 2017 at the Focus! festival at Lincoln Center, the concerto features a synthesized piano solo, performed on Yamaha's Disklavier ENSPIRE, a reproducing piano.
Said Sierra of the musical possibilities provided by advanced technological dexterity:
"It's not to be limited by physicality; this is an incredible breadth of possibilities driven by ideas, driven by an impulse that comes out of concepts of aesthetics, [and] also technical compositional aspects that interest me ... I see this as a very valid tool to compose music"
