Evento

Xenakis - VNM Festival 2011 - Night II

Celebrating the life and work of Iannis Xenakis.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Scotiabank Dance Centre (677 Davie Street

mini-polytope 02
A collective of local artists have created the 'mini-polytopes' that will be presented each night. These installation-performances have been inspired by Xenakis' polytopes large-scale, site-specific, multi-media works that integrate sound, light and architecture.

8:30PM
Introduction by Sharon Kanach and James Harley
Sharon Kanach, a Paris-based new music specialist, was Iannis Xenakis' assistant for two decades, and leads the Centre Iannis Xenakis in France and the Xenakis Project of the Americas at CUNY. She has edited a number of books of Xenakis' writings, including Music and Architecture by Iannis Xenakis, Architectural Projects, Texts, and Realizations (Pendragon Press, 2008), and is the author of Performing Xenakis (Pendragon Press, 2010).

James Harley is a Canadian composer presently based in Ontario, where he teaches Digital Music at the University of Guelph. He obtained his doctorate at McGill University in 1994, after spending six years in Europe. His music has been awarded prizes in Canada, USA, UK, France, Poland, Japan, and has been performed and broadcast around the world. He is the author of Xenakis: His Life in Music (Routledge Press, 2004).

8:45PM
JACK Quartet (New York)
Iannis Xenakis, ST-4/1.080262 (1956-62), 11' and Tetras (1983), 16'
An explosive, young quartet that has been hailed by critics worldwide as one of the most exceptional new music groups to emerge on the international scene in recent years, the JACK Quartet will make their Vancouver debut at this year's festival, performing all of Xenakis' works for string quartet over two nights (October 21 22, 2011).

Xenakis' first work for string quartet, ST/4 was an early stochastic work, composed with the aid of an IBM 7090 computer that determined note sequence, instrumentation, pitch, duration and dynamics.

Called a "riotous celebration of sound" (Alex Ross, New Yorker),Tetras, composed for the Arditti Quartet, "welds the four strings into a single, writhing, glissando-haunted super-instrument." (Andrew Clements, The Guardian)

http://www.jackquartet.com/

9:30PM
Danny Tones (Vancouver)
Iannis Xenakis, Psappha (14')
Award-winning percussionist Danny Tones performs Psappha, a piece for solo percussion that incorporates "absurdly complex interlocking timbral and rhythmic patterns, reminiscent of a one man gamelan orchestra" (Howard Goldstein, BBC Music Magazine).

http://www.danieltones.com/

10PM
Roger Admiral (Edmonton)
Robert HP Platz, trail (30'); Iannis Xenakis, Evryali (10')
This is a special opportunity to hear works by Xenakis, Bashaw, and Platz performed over two nights by one of Canada's premiere performers of contemporary piano music.

Platz' trail is dedicated to Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Manfred Eigen, whose ideas about hyper-cycles provided some inspiration for this musical work. The work features a polyphony of forms: seven musical textures that are transformed each at its own pace simultaneously within each of the seven sections.

The title Evryali can refer to "the open sea", "Gorgon", or "Medusa", the one of the three Gorgon sisters in Greek mythology whose hair was turned into serpents. The work employs arborescent writing, whereby tree-shaped figures are converted into melodic lines.

http://www.rogeradmiral.com/

* Performance times approximate.