Madeleine Shapiro


So Percussion

Other Soundscapes 3

Music by
Salvatore Sciarrino
Orlando Garcia
John Cage

Wednesday, October 23, 7:30pm
Chelsea Art Museum
556 West 22nd Street
$15 / $10 students, seniors, and EMF Subscribers

Under the general title of Other Soundscapes, and in a venue different from the venue in which New York Soundscape was presented, EMF sought to open its presentations of environmental sound and environmentally-inspired music to composers and performers writing for or playing acoustic instruments with or without electronics and not necessarily using New York sounds. From EMF's perspective, all composers, indeed all musicians, should be involved in heightening environmental awareness through sound. These concerts are intended to be an invitation to all musicians to join our environmental activities.

< Back to the festival index

↓ Concert program

PROGRAM

Ai limiti della notte (To the limits of the night).................................................Salvatore Sciarrino
Madeleine Shapiro, cello

After Humans...................................................................................................Orlando Garcia
Jacek Kolasinski, video artist
Madeleine Shapiro, cellist

Percussion music after nature by John Cage
Third Construction
Inlets
Child of Tree
Branches
So Percussion (Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting)



ABOUT THE ARTISTS



Salvatore Sciarrino
Sicilian composer Salvatore Sciarrino has lived in Rome and Milan and now resides in Citta di Castello. He served as the artistic director of the Teatro Comunale in Bologna for three years and taught at the Conservatories of Milan, Perugia and Florence. His name is associated with a highly original compositional style.

Orlando Garcia
Orlando Garcia, composer, is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including those from Rockefeller, Fulbright, Dutka, and Cintas Foundations. He is the founder and director of the New Music Miami Festival and Music of the Americas Festival. His works are recorded on manh labels, among them New Albion, O.O. Discs, CRI /New World, Albany, North/South Consonance, and Capstone Records.


Jacek Jerzy Kolasinski
Video artist Jacek Jerzy Kolasinski came to the United States from Poland where he studied history and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. His multimedia works and installations have been featured in shows and screenings in the USA and abroad. His awards include the Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship and the Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship.
John Cage (1912-1992)
More than any other composer in the 20th century, through his early work with percussion and prepared piano, then with electronics, John Cage extended our concept of music to include all sounds. As early as 1937, he spoke of "electrical instruments which will make available any and all sounds that can be heard ..." Composer, author, visual artist, music advisor to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Cage's life was a path marked by musical milestones, awards and honors, and, eventually, an invaluable legacy of thought and sound.
Madeleine Shapiro
Madeleine Shapiro, cellist, concert producer, educator, and founding director of ModernWorks, performs throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America. From 1974-1996, she was cellist and co-director of The New Music Consort, which toured the United States and Europe and presented premiere performances of works by Milton Babbitt, John Cage, Charles Wuorinen, and Mario Davidovsky. Her performances are available on New World Records, CRI, Mode Records, and Harvestworks labels.
So Percussion
Eric Beach – Josh Quillen
Adam Sliwinski – Jason Treuting
Since coming together at the Yale School of Music, So Percussion, called "astonishing and entrancing" by Billboard Magazine, and "brilliant" by the New York Times, has quickly forged a unique and diverse career. Their music runs the gamut from percussion classics to new commissions to original music. So Percussion has performed at the Lincoln Center Festival, Carnegie Hall, Stanford Lively Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, and throughout the United States. Recent tours to Russia, Australia, Italy, Germany, and the Ukraine have brought them international acclaim.

ABOUT THE MUSIC

Salvatore Sciarrino
Ai limiti della notte (1983)
"With me, music inhabits a threshold region. Like dreams, where something both exists and yet doesn't exist, and exists as something else as well. These are the sounds found close to the horizon of the senses, magnified by ancient silence through some submerged collapse of memory."

·

Orlando Garcia
After Humans (Después de los Humanos) (2008, world premiere) was written for cellist Madeleine Shapiro with the support of the Florida International University College of Architecture and the Arts (CARTA) and the LIPM Studios in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The work for cello, fixed media, and video images is a result of a collaboration between composer Orlando Jacinto Garcia and video artist Jacek Kolsainski that took place between July 2007 and June 2008. The electronics for the work were completed at the LIPM studios during the summer of 2007 while the cello part was written several months later. The video images were collected in Argentina, Puerto Rico, and South Florida. The title for the work refers to the notion of what the world might be like if humans no longer existed. This concept is presented in abstract visual and sonic terms as suggested by the counterpoint of images and sounds that unfold slowly throughout the piece. Tonight’s performance of After Humans is the world premiere of the work.

·

John Cage
Third Construction (1941)
Inlets (1977)
Child of Tree (1975)
Branches (1976)
So Percussion writes: "For any percussionist, John Cage is an inescapable figure. Remarkably, many visual artists, dancers, philosophers, and writers can make the same claim: His influence permeates our culture in underappreciated ways (he invented the first turntable instrument in 1939, and produced the first 'happening' in 1952). Fortunately for us, he believed that writing for percussion instruments and electronics was the perfect way to promote his revolution. Along with Edgard Varese and several others, he virtually invented the percussion ensemble in western music."


< Back to the festival index