TALEA Ensemble: Stockhausen, Tenney, Harvey (Sept. 24)
Posted by sequenza21 in Concert Announcement
POINTS OF CONTACT
Thursday, September 24, 2009, 8PM
Roulette (20 Greene St., New York City (at Canal))
$15/10 (students) tickets at the door
www.taleaensemble.org
Jonathan Harvey: Tombeau de Messiaen (1994) for piano and electronics
James Tenney: Ergodos II (for John Cage) (1964) version for tape with instrumental responses (with live remix of tape part)
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Kontakte (1960) version for piano, percussion, and 4-channel electronic sounds
Anthony Cheung (piano), Alex Lipowski (percussion), Victor Adan (sound projection)
The Talea Ensemble opens its 2009-10 season with a tribute to the late Karlheinz Stockhausen. The concert’s centerpiece is Stockhausen’s seminal electroacoustic work, Kontakte (1960), complimented by works of James Tenney and Jonathan Harvey, two strikingly inventive composers drawn to Stockhausen’s musical world. The three works combine the sound worlds of piano, percussion and electronics. The concert on Thursday, September 24th at 8 PM takes place at New York City’s premier venue for experimental music, Roulette (20 Greene St., at Canal). Admission is $15/10 (students).
Since Karlheinz Stockhausen’s death in 2007, few US ensembles have celebrated the legacy of his music. The Talea Ensemble is proud to present one of his most compelling and enduring works, which simply must be experienced live, along with music by two very different composers that complement and challenge it in the wake of its influence. The Talea Ensemble’s tribute concert has been generously supported and endorsed by the Stockhausen estate, run by his 2 widows Kathinka Pasveer and Suzanne Stephens, and through donations from the Stockhausen Verlag. During Stockhausen’s life, he assembled a close group of musicians who specialize in his works, and was often hesitant of unknown performers. The Talea Ensemble is especially honored to have the endorsement of the Stockhausen family and be included in the Stockhausen network to present this important memorial.
Stockhausen’s early masterpiece, Kontakte (1960), set the standard for electroacoustic music, and is still one of the most successful works to utilize timbre and spatialization to ultimate effect. The tape part, realized at the WDR Köln studio for electronic music, is remarkable for its four-channel surround-sound spatialization: speakers placed around the audience in a square configuration with sonic objects constantly moving in time and space. The live instrumentalists reinforce and play off the attacks and resonances of the tape part. Kontakte is about the “contacts” between live and prerecorded synthesized sounds, density and lightness, the pitch-timbre continuum, velocity and stasis.
The concert will also include Jonathan Harvey’s Tombeau de Messiaen for piano and electronics (1994) as well as James Tenney’s Ergodos II (1964) for tape with instrumental responses. In Tombeau de Messiaen, Harvey alludes to the bell-like sonorities and radiant harmonies of Messiaen, but with an extra added element of microtonal harmony in the electronics. The form of Tenney’s Ergodos II may be said to be highly non-directional; with the instrumental responses, performers improvise based on a graphic representation of what they are hearing at any given moment. For this performance, instrumental responses will be performed using Stockhausen’s percussion setup for Kontakte, creating a timbral link with the centerpiece of the program. Composer and sound projectionist Victor Adan will also do a live remix of the tape part (as Tenney alludes to in his performance directions), creating an additional layer of improvisational dialogue between electronics and instruments.
For more information on this and other concerts, visit our website, or email us. The Talea Ensemble’s 2009-10 season is now underway and is our biggest and most exciting yet!
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