a collaborative series of events on the themes of change & transformation ... in our lives, in our art

National Gallery of Art - East Building Atrium

March 7, 2010

Washington, DC

a concert at the crossing point of Music, Architecture, Technology and Art

CHANGES: SEASONS

Two weeks of preliminary events will culminate on March 7, 2010, in the Atrium of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art with a concert of music by legendary pioneers Edgard Varèse and Iannis Xenakis, as well as music by Steve Antosca and Roger Reynolds.

Composers Reynolds and Antosca will curate a series of workshops, discussions, lectures, forums and concerts addressing current and also historical trends in the use of technology in music, the role that architecture (performance space) plays in the dissemination of music, art, and technology – all directed to Washington area residents. They will be joined by two young artists who have already garnered national and international attention, percussionist and installation artist Ross Karre (of UCSD and the Ensemble XII) and Jaime Oliver (Calit2 and Lima).

Under the CHANGES: SEASONS umbrella, an attempt will be made to balance, in a uniquely inclusive and productive fashion, the presentation, explanation, and discussion of the festival’s content and its implications.

CHANGES: SEASONS events are presented in partnership between the National Gallery of Art and the University of California – DC, with the additional collaboration of California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technologies (Calit2), the University of Maryland, the Computer Music Department of Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, American University, La Maison Française at the Embassy of France, the Library of Congress, the Contemporary Music Forum, the Randy Hostetler Living Room Music Fund and Meet the Composer.

This series culminates in an evening at the National Gallery of Art on March 7, that will include a panel discussion inspired by the Gallery’s concurrent Meyerhoff exhibit and a concert.

The day’s events are free and open to the public.

The pre-concert panel will discuss art, architecture, music and technology. Participants will include organizers Reynolds and Antosca, NGA curator, Charlie Ritchie, moderation by Stephen Ackert, Head of the NGA Music Department.

The CHANGES: SEASONS concert is being presented by the Contemporary Music Forum and will center around Reynolds’ SEASONS, music by co-organizer Antosca, and by Twentieth Century pioneers Edgard Varèse and Iannis Xenakis. The program will feature an exceptional complement of international specialists in contemporary music performance and the use of computers in performance: Lisa Cella (UMBC) – flute, Bill Kalinkos (Alarm Will Sound, New York) – bass clarinet, Ross Karre (red fish blue fish, the Ensemble XII, and UCSD) – percussionist and interdisciplinary artist, Lina Bahn (UC/Boulder & VERGE ensemble) – violin, Alexis Descharmes (Ensemble Court-Circuit, the National Opera Orchestra, Paris) – violoncello and Jaime Oliver (Lima, Peru, and Calit2, UCSD) – computer musician.

SEASONS is a cycle of nine shorter works. The first of two 4-movement cycles (totaling about three-quarters of an hour) will be premièred on this occasion. It’s subject is change and consistency through the four stages of human life (infancy, youth, maturity, age) and the four stages of weather during a year (spring, summer, autumn, winter). Both cyclical and progressive influences are present, providing connectivity and flexibility, while insuring shifting perspectives. The entire cycle will be presented in future seasons by the adventuresome New York ensemble Alarm Will Sound, Alan Pierson, Music Director.

Steve Antosca’s One becomes Two for violin and computer incorporates real-time computer processing with live performance. Here the expansion of sonic qualities is represented by two characteristics: the flowing of the melodic line from a single voice to a multiple voices, and the use of the computer for the interactive transformation of the violin sound.

In the late 50s, Edgard Varèse collaborated with architect Le Corbusier and his then associate, composer-designer Iannis Xenakis, to create a unique architectural space, his prototype “polytope”, a term that Xenakis later used to describe projects that involved music, light and custom-designed spaces. The Philips Pavilion was designed primarily by Xenakis, and featured Varèse’s first venture into the realm of grapplings with the imaginative freedoms dimensions of electroacoustic sound as conceived for a surround experience: Poème électronique. CHANGES: SEASONS will present a newly realized version of this path-breaking work, by Kees Tazelaar at the Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatory, the Netherlands.

Composer Xenakis identified one of his major contributions to the evolution of music as the concept position that all its dimensions – including pitch – could and should be capable of continuous variability. Two path breaking studies for solo violin, Mikka and Mikka S – music that involves the simultaneous intertwining of two continuously wandering and independent lines – provide an elegant revelation in this regard.

For the CHANGES: SEASONS concert, performers will be placed strategically at different levels throughout the Atrium of I. M Pei’s East Building of the NGA. Their placement, coordinated with technology developed for the concert, will respond to the sonic – as well as the visual – uniqueness of I. M. Pei’s architectural vision.

logo: karen reynolds

The inaugural concert of the National Gallery of Art New Music Ensemble

performing the world première of Cycle I of SEASONS by Roger Reynolds