ACFNY SUPPORTED | COMPOSER PORTRAIT: BEAT FURRER

Swiss/Austrian composer Beat Furrer will return to New York for an ACFNY supported concert at Carnegie Hall by the Argento Chamber Ensemble. Highlighting Beat Furrer’s exploration of the human voice and instrumental sounds, the program includes a WORLD PREMIERE featuring soprano Tony Arnold and trombonist Tim Albright, two electrifying works for chamber ensemble, and dramatic work for large chamber orchestra, narrated by the composer himself.

ARTISTS
Argento Chamber Ensemble
Michel Galante, conductor
Tony Arnold, soprano
Tim Albright, trombone
Beat Furrer, narrator

ABOUT THE PROGRAM
The musical source for Xenos III is a computer­generated analysis of Furrer’s own speaking voice. From this spectrogram, Furrer extracts certain frequencies, amplitudes (volumes), and timbres, and his piece is scored for instruments that uncannily re­create the presence of the original voice. The audience will have the unique opportunity to hear Furrer perform in the narrator’s role.

Furrer’s ambitious 1998 instrumental tour­de­force still explores extremes of speed and rhythmic tension in within a dense, raging instrumental texture. About this work, the music critic Peter Grahme Woolf wrote that it “evokes the hum of a circular saw, whose energy unloads in noise ‘only when the saw meets resistance.’”

Furrer’s spazio immergente (submerged space) is an aural optical illusion, uniquely pairing trombone with a soprano that uses extremely fast alternation juxtaposed with periodic “markers” every 20 or 30 seconds. The contrast creates the impression of a glacial undercurrent of movement that is highlighted by lightening-­fast surface. After this piece was canceled this season in its scheduled Salzburg Mozarteum premiere concert, the Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg has generously given the World Premiere to Argento for its Zankel Hall debut. Trombonist Tim Albright and Soprano Tony Arnold perform.

In linea dell’orizzonte (horizontal line) Furrer uses a heterogeneous group of instruments of piano, violin, cello, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, percussion and electric guitar to create a process of intersecting voices that distort one another in the passage of time.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Beat Furrer was born in Switzerland in 1954. He moved to Vienna in 1975 to pursue studies with Roman Haubenstock-Ramati (composition) and Otman Suitner (conducting). In 1985 he co-founded Klangforum Wien, Austria’s foremost chamber orchestra dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. In 2003 he was awarded the Music Prize of the City of Vienna and the Golden Lion for FAMA at the 2006 Venice Biennale. In 2014 he was awarded the Great Austrian State Prize. His latest opera La Bianca Notte based on texts by Dino Campana, premiered in Hamburg in spring 2015. He is currently working on his new opera Violetter Schnee (Violet Snow) based on a Libretto by Vladimir Sorokin. Furrer has served as a professor of composition at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria since 1991. His work can be seen as an exploration of modalities of expression, always curious about context and meaning and how they transform musical material. This has led to a rich sound world of extended instrumental and vocal techniques. His body of work is impressively vibrant and multi-layered, with a stunning luminosity.

Argento is New York City’s premiere virtuoso chamber ensemble dedicated to innovative musical performance and the discovery of daring artistic paths. Championing contemporary composers and framing classical repertoire in new contexts, Argento inspires musical inquiry through artistic collaboration and education. Argento has built an international reputation since its founding in 2000. With a firm commitment to intellectually rigorous interpretations, the nine­-member ensemble regularly expands to thirty musicians to deliver technically demanding performances. The ensemble collaborates with leading and emerging composers produces internationally acclaimed recordings, and brings pressing concerns of contemporary music to the forefront.

Praised by The New York Times for delivering “tour de force” performances that are “dynamic and charged,” composer­/conductor Michel Galante specializes in groundbreaking music of the 21st century. Since founding the Argento Chamber Ensemble in 2000, Michel Galante has served as the ensemble’s director and guided the development of its parent non­-profit organization, the Argento New Music Project. A sought-­after guest conductor, Galante has worked with ensembles including the Janáček Philharmonic, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Canada’s Ergo Ensemble, Ensemble Courage of Dresden, and the OCNM Contemporary Music Ensemble. As a composer, Galante received the prestigious Fulbright, Hertz, and Mellon fellowships as well as prizes from ASCAP and the Composer’s Guild. Some of his recent commissions include music for the Kate Weare Dance Company, New Chamber Ballet, Ensemble Court­-Circuit, and Contact, Daniel Druckman and the New York Philharmonic’s new music ensemble.

Hailed by the New York Times as “a bold, powerful interpreter,” Tony Arnold is recognized internationally as a leading proponent of new music in concert and recording, having premiered over 200 works “with a musicality and virtuosity that have made her the Cathy Berberian of her generation” (Chicago Tribune). Since becoming the first­prize laureate of both the 2001 Gaudeamus International Competition (NL) and the 2001 Louise D. McMahon Competition (USA), Arnold has collaborated with the most cutting­-edge composers and instrumentalists on the world stage, and shares with the audience her “broader gift for conveying the poetry and nuance behind outwardly daunting contemporary scores” (Boston Globe). With more than two­-dozen discs to her credit, Arnold has recorded a broad segment of the modern vocal repertory with esteemed chamber music colleagues. Her recording of George Crumb’s iconic Ancient Voices of Children (Bridge) was nominated for a 2006 Grammy Award.

Trombonist Tim Albright enjoys a diverse freelance career as a performer and teacher in New York City. He can be heard frequently as a member of Steve Coleman’s band, Five Elements. He is a trombonist for the Atlantic Brass Quintet, Riverside Symphony and Argento New Music Project, and is currently a member of the orchestra of the acclaimed Broadway revival of West Side Story. Tim has played with the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, The Knights, with jazz trumpeter Ralph Alessi, jazz clarinetist Don Byron, and with such popular artists as Sufjan Stevens, Rufus Wainwright, The National, Antony and the Johnsons, Martha Wainwright, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and Last Shadow Puppets. He has been heard in numerous Broadway productions, including Spamalot, The Producers, A Chorus Line, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Legally Blonde, and Fosse.

Tickets are 15$, discounts available for students and seniors. For more info, click here. 

Photo (c) David Furrer (2014)

VENUE
Carnegie Hall, Zankel Hall
881 7th Avenue Seventh Avenue between 56 and 57 Streets
New York, NY 10019