Cellist Johannes Moser

This just in Friday night: Please see the TCD Arts and Culture page for Tom Strini’s review of the MSO/Moser concert.

Johannes Moser will be the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra‘s guest soloist in Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 Friday and Saturday nights.

On Thursday night, though, you can find him at Blu, the chic lounge high atop the Pfister Hotel. Moser won’t be there for drinks or the spectacular view. He will arrive with his electric cello and his laptop, to play music he’s created himself. The performance will begin at 7 p.m. Admission is free.

“I’ve experimented with the electric cello for quite a long time, now,” Moser said Tuesday, from New York. “The electric instrument doesn’t have a very attractive tone; it’s a matter of what you can do with it.”

Thanks to a computer music program called Ableton, he can do a lot. Moser, 30, runs the cello output through the laptop, and Ableton lets him loop alter the sound in just about any way he wants.

“I realized that I suddenly had access to a whole new sound world,” he said. “I’m interested in making something completely new come from a cello.”

At Blu, he will play pieces that come out of private improvisations. Hours of play with a certain idea leads to a sort of semi-finished product with lots of room for responding to the moment.

“I’ve always had a lot of curiosity about different sorts of sounds,” Moser said. “The basis of a piece could come from sounds I hear in the street or anywhere. I usually take a little cell of sound I find and then try to elaborate on it. I just saw that ’80s movie, Tron, and found that synthesized sound appealing, so I’ve been exploring that.”

This sort of thing is a step outside normal cellist behavior, but that doesn’t mean Moser disdains the normal cello and its core repertoire. He grew up with them in his hometown, Munich. His father is a professional cellist and his mother is a singer; his family goes back generations in classical music.

Moser perfectly is just as happy playing Saint-Saens’ ubiquitous The Swan, a sentimental staple of cellists everywhere, as he is playing the computerized, experimental stuff or his upcoming quirky tour with Phyllis Chen, who specializes in toy piano. When he plays the Shostakovich concerto with the MSO, Moser will of course play a conventional acoustic cello without amplification. But even this concerto is a little off the beaten path. Moser, like his teacher, David Geringas, has made a practice of commissioning new works and playing lesser-known ones, including concertos by Honegger, Hindemith, Zimmerman and Henze.

He feels a particular affinity for Shostakovich, who spent most of his career getting in and out of trouble with Soviet authorities.

“It was an eye-opener and an ear-opener to read his biography,” Moser said. “He wrote this concerto in 1959. Six years after Stalin’s death, he mocks one of Stalin’s favorite tunes in the last movement. There are so many layers to Shostakovich, more than you see up front. I hope to convey those multiple layers.”

Johannes Moser plays solo at Blu, atop the Pfister Hotel, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 14; admission free.

He will join guest conductor Paul Daniel, principal conductor of the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra, and the MSO at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Jan. 15-16, at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall. Also on the program: James MacMillan’s Sinfonietta, Carl Nielsen’s Tickets range from $25 to $93. Call 414-291-7605 or visit the MSO website. Tickets can also be purchased at the Marcus Center box office, 414-273-7206.