Wikipedia says:

Condie’s best known animated work is 1985′s The Big Snit, an offbeat parable about marriage, Scrabble, sawing, and nuclear war. The Big Snit was nominated for an Oscar and won the Genie Award for Best Animated Short, along with over a dozen international awards. The Big Snit was also voted as #25 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by animation professionals.

[via sawing14s]

The concerto, called CATcerto (web site) was first performed by Nora and the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra in Lithuania on June 5th 2009. The world premiere is available on Youtube (or by using the player below).

It is quite a musical feat to conduct an orchestra along with a cat! Piečaitis writes:

The problems of the performance of this atypical piece became clear during its first rehearsals. It is not very easy to guess what the cat is playing, so that the video material must be studied very closely and be oriented in the accompaniment not only by what the soloist is playing, but also by the movements she makes beforehand. This became a particular challenge for the orchestra.

Nor was it simple to rehearse the nearly minute-long prelude to the piece, in which the main themes of the piece are presented, with the soloist calmly sitting at the piano and »waiting« for her entrance cue. If I started the piece just 3–4 seconds too early or too late, it would be impossible to avoid a collapse. This risk truly raises your blood pressure.

Video material does not »breathe«, so that you cannot exchange a glance with the soloist and must unconditionally adapt to her.

Nora the Piano Cat writes in her artist’s statement:

I would like to thank Mr Piečaitis for giving me the opportunity to show the entire world that a cat concert pianist can indeed play beautiful music with an orchestra. It is the mission of every great artist like me to inspire others to create. If I have inspired even one person to write music, or learn an instrument, than I will have lived a meaningful life.

I love this video – it is musically interesting, beautiful, and very creative and inspiring.

It’s one of my favorite jazz Youtube videos at the moment, because it’s an amazing example of rhythmic interplay, varied textures, use of time and space, jazz idioms, and synergy and flow in a performance. There are killer solos by Chick Corea and Bobby Mcferrin. I have watched this video like 20 times by now, and I still get new ideas every time I watch it. During the performance Mcferrin makes a joke about being “not quite sure of” the line about the sunburned hands – perhaps he or his special someone doesn’t get sun burns! 5 stars! [Via Youtube]