As for the philosophical issue of machines producing sounds ordinarily produced by professional musicians, Quayle sounds a cautious note.
"In the concert music world, I don't see any significant risk of a digital orchestra replacing the need for traditional orchestras," he says. "But definitely it would be more of a concern in the Broadway or Hollywood worlds."
Thakar, likewise, sees the Fauxharmonic as non-threatening.
"But where Paul's digital orchestra will always have us beat is that his performances will never be out of tune and will always be together," he says. "Whether you're talking about our orchestra or the New York Philharmonic, we are human. We play out of tune sometimes; we play not together sometimes."
Smith's role is not just to organize and process those well-tuned, coordinated notes. He gets in the act as conductor, wielding a kind of electronic baton.
"If I stop moving, [the music] will keep playing, but my moving can stop it," he says. There's a fermata [a pause] in Matthew's score, and I'll stop for that."
Although Smith has never worked as a conductor of a human orchestra, he studied conducting with two legendary podium masters, Leonard Bernstein and Sergiu Celibidache, and he will be using easily recognizable gestures.
"This is a very natural feeling for me," Smith says, who makes his "conducting" debut at the BCO concert. "It will be different to have people staring at me. I think I'll face them. It would be incredibly boring without the motions. The audience would see somebody oddly disconnected to what's going on."
The Fauxharmonic's inventor likens his product to "a mushy plastic thing that's in one shape already, but you can bend it, and it will spring back. It feels like a gelatinous thing," he says. "I can make the cellos a little bit louder in real time. And the little podium I stand on is sensitive to my weight. If I lean toward the first violins, they play louder. That's kind of fun."
Of course, there won't actually be a bunch of violinists sitting to his left on the stage. Just space. And sound, emerging from state-of-the-art speakers lent by Bang & Olufsen for the occasion.
Although in-the-moment elements will separate a Fauxharmonic experience from a mere tape playback, that may not persuade people fundamentally opposed to nonacoustic music.
"But the sound entering your mind, the sense of melody, of things being louder and softer - that experience happens whether the sound is coming out of loudspeakers or a live violin," Smith says. "There's a reason 'art' and 'artificiality' are related. Technology is not questioned at all except in classical music, the last bastion against acceptance."
That bastion may be weakened a bit by the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra's experiment.
"The concert hall is definitely the place to have the comparison," Smith says. "I'm just so happy to have an opportunity to demonstrate it."
IF YOU GO
The Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and Fauxharmonic Orchestra will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at Beth Tfiloh Congregation, 3300 Old Court Road, Pikesville, and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 5 at Goucher College, 1021 Dulaney Valley Road, Towson. Tickets are $25. Call 410-685-4050 or go to thebco.org.
