CONCERT | ARGENTO CHAMBER ENSEMBLE | MOVING SOUNDS FESTIVAL 2009

Program:

Bernhard Lang, Differenz/Wiederholung 2 (U.S. PREMIERE)
Beat Furrer, Xenos II for narrator and 20-person chamber ensemble (WORLD PREMIERE)

Bernhard Lang’s Differenz/Wiederholung 2 (Difference/Repetition 2) features a trio of an opera singer, a Kurdish Makam singer and a rapper accompanied by an electro-acoustic chamber orchestra of 14 musicians. Lang is one of the most revered composers of the contemporary European avant-garde, and in his powerful use of repetition, he juxtaposes the aesthetics of turntablism with the idiom of classical works. Lang introduces the work before Argento’s performance.

Beat Furrer’s Xenos II is a cutting-edge work for narrator and 20-person chamber orchestra. Its musical source is a computer-generated 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 re-create the presence of the original voice. In this performance, Furrer himself performs in the narrator’s role.

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.

> Information on the Moving Sounds Festival 2009

VENUE
Le Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street
New York, NY 10012

Tickets: $20 (for both the Argento Chamber Ensemble and Mantra Percussion concerts), available at the door, online at lepoissonrouge.com/calendar/2009/9, or by calling (212) 505-3474.