10 | ACFNY | 12 | ANNIVERSARY CONCERT | ARGENTO CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
Celebrating 10 Years of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York
The anniversary concert series continues with this performance by renowned New York-based Argento Chamber Ensemble. The program for this night’s event will feature the world premiere of Austrian composer Bernhard Lang’s new piece Monadologie XVIII “Moving Architecture.” (2012)
The piece, which was commissioned by the Austrian Cultural Forum to commemorate its 10-year anniversary, traces the building’s architecture in 22 layers with the architecture’s original proportions referenced in time-structures. In a choreographic layer, Austrian performance artist Silke Grabinger transposed the underlying rhythmic structures to movement patterns, for which she developed a new form of “dance-writing”, which Lang integrated directly into the score. The concert will be preceded by a brief composer talk between Bernhard Lang and composer and musicologist George Grella.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Bernhard Lang is an Austrian composer of the experimental and avant-garde school, particularly advocating a style he has self-termed “repetition-perpetrator”, and has composed almost 30 pieces under the name Differenz/Wiederholung (difference / repetition). His pieces have been performed all over the world. Lang and his work were featured at the Austrian Cultural Forum’s 2009 Moving Sounds Festival, which saw the U.S. premiere of his piece DW2 and just this past February 17 at the inaugural anniversary concert with the acclaimed Talea Ensemble.
For further information, please visit >> http://members.chello.at/bernhard.lang/
Silke Grabinger is an Austrian choreographer and dancer, and the founder and artistic director of the collective SILK, Dance Art & Air. Prior to that she was a Solo Dancer for Cirque du Soleil & the Beatles Show LOVE in Las Vegas. Grabinger has performed at the ImPulsTanz Festival and the Wiener Konzerthaus, and has worked on international collaborations with Paul Gulda, Dirk Stermann, Dave St. Pierre, and others. In October 2011 she performed her solo-piece Versuchsperson Silke Grabinger at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York within the framework of the Beauty Contest exhibition.
For further information, please visit >> www.silk.at
The Argento Chamber Ensemble is the performance arm of the Argento New Music Project. The ensemble performs compositions that embody pressing musical concerns in Western music. Consisting of nine core members, the ensemble regularly expands to perform and record chamber orchestra works of up to 30 musicians. They have toured widely in the US and abroad, in festivals including the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the International Festival of Spectral Music/ Istanbul, the American Festival of Microtonal Music, the Sounds French Festival, the Kilkenny Arts Festival/ Ireland, and Shanghai´s International Festival of Electroacoustic Music. Argento has worked closely with leading composers such as Pierre Boulez, Tania Leon, Tristan Murail, Elliott Carter, Philippe Hurel, Gerard Pésson, Joshua Fineberg, and Philippe Leroux.
For further information, please visit >> www.argentomusic.org
This series has been produced in close collaboration with the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture.
ABOUT THE SERIES
The year 2012 will mark the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Austrian Cultural Forum’s landmark midtown building, which was designed by the late Raimund Abraham, as what Herbert Muschamp of the New York Times called a “lucidly rational modern glass tower” that provides a “gateway into the tradition of modernity associated with Vienna at the turn of the last century.” A host of different events and series throughout the year will commemorate these past ten years on many different levels.
Ten concerts featuring newly commissioned works and dedications by contemporary composers will form the musical focal point of these special anniversary programs. While most of the featured composers are Austrian, the performers will be renowned Austrian and American contemporary ensembles, such as Klangforum, Talea Ensemble, ICE Ensemble, and the JACK Quartet.
The ten concerts, which will take place throughout the year, reflect the gateway to modernity associated with Austria in the ten years following this most recent turn of the century.Composers such as Bernhard Lang, Kurt Schwertsik, Manuela Kerer, and Johannes Maria Staud are at the forefront of cutting-edge creativity, and as such the ideal representatives of what contemporary Austrian music has to offer.
VENUE
ACFNY