By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • February 13, 2008
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Much promise, little payoff: That's been the story of computer music for most of the past few decades. But the development of immensely powerful laptops is one of the most exciting developments in contemporary music; performers can transform sound in ear-bending ways unimaginable only a few years ago, and do it onstage, in real time. For composers, it's a world exploding with possibilities.

Out on the bleeding edge of the new technology is the Tokyo-based Laptop Orchestra, which brought a minimalist, sometimes difficult but stunningly beautiful work to the Kennedy Center's Theater Lab on Monday night. Composed by the group's director, Philippe Chatelain, "1(000) Breath(s)" takes the sound of a sho -- a traditional Japanese mouth organ, played by Ko Ishikawa -- and transforms it through a network of six laptops into a meta-instrument of extraordinary scope and scale.

It's an intriguing way to ground technology with the human breath, where music (and this piece) began. Playing in almost total darkness and surrounded by huge flat-screen monitors, Ishikawa and the orchestra slowly built sustained tones into a radiant cloud of sound, projected from speakers around the theater. It was severe, demanding music, with the sounds of the sho transformed into a "noise music" palette of clicks, roars and sudden waves of static. Stripped of conventional narrative and drama, even emotion, this was music pared to a Zenlike purity; and by the end, you felt as if you'd been in a strange but beguiling landscape, blown by a godlike wind.