Library of Congress and Portland Ovations will co-present “America’s foremost new-music group” (Alex Ross), the International Contemporary Ensemble, in an interactive digital concert at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 28, featuring the world premieres of Suzanne Farrin’s Nacht and Ashley Fure’s interior listening protocol 1, paired with Olivier Messiaen’s Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus for ondes Martenot.
The stream also will include a monitored chat and a “lobby” experience, before and after the performance, where audiences can tune in to and participate in live discussions between Farrin, Fure, and members of the ensemble. Glimpses into the creation of Suzanne Farrin’s Nacht will be shared in a screening of a short documentary. Viewers around the world can view and participate in the digital event via YouTube Live and are invited to continue conversations with artists after the performance in the “lobby” via Zoom.
“Ovations is thrilled to be a partner with the Library of Congress in this re-imagining of our original April 30 engagement with the International Contemporary Ensemble and these acclaimed women composers,” said Aimée M. Petrin, Executive and Artistic Director. “This is what Ovations is all about: creating innovative and high quality artistic experiences to which our audiences would otherwise not have access — all while supporting artists in creating new work.”
The program will take the audience through a virtual-immersive experience, focusing on notions of perception and listening. Farrin’s Nacht, created in collaboration with ICE through remote collaborative systems, unfolds in a dreamy atmosphere featuring the ondes Martenot (an early electronic cousin of the theremin), harp, percussion, bass, and voice. Set to texts by Rumi and Hafiz in translation by Cyrus Atabay, the work explores language, translation, and identity. In writing the piece, Suzanne thought about the question, “What do we experience differently by seeing writers like Rumi and Hafiz through the filter of the German language?”
“This is a listening score. To perform it, please find two mason jars or two large glasses,” is how Ashley Fure’s interior listening protocol 1 begins. Created specifically for and in this time of social distancing, the piece is a full-body listening experience, only made possible by audience members participating from their homes. As Fure leads a slowly evolving physical choreography, the jars produce a magically immersive soundscape in the privacy of your own ears.
The ondes Martenot became the instrument for the human voice for Olivier Messiaen. In 1941 as Messiaen was prisoner of war during World War II, he composed one of his greatest pieces, Quatour pour la fin du temps (The Quartet for the End of Time). The opening of the work as well as the source for the fifth movement, Louange à l’Eternité de Jésus, is from Messiaen’s 1937 Fêtes des Belles Eaux (Festival of the Lovely Waters), written for six ondes Martinot to accompany the majestic fountains along the Seine for the International Exposition for Art and Technology in Paris. The only piece Messiaen took from his life outside of captivity was this moment for ondes Martenot.
As Nokia Bell Labs’ E.A.T Ensemble-in-Residence, ICE is uniquely positioned to assemble contemporary music’s most creative and resourceful minds to establish field-leading best practices for remote collaboration through a new initiative, Re.Co Lab. By creating a system of custom-calibrated hardware and software toolkits, composers can discover new sounds with instrumentalists/vocalists from around the world. 23 new works will be created with this system. A major component of this initiative is to continue compensating artists during this time when they cannot meet in close physical proximity. By sharing toolkits for remote collaboration, artistic agency is optimized and keeps the music community connected. Dozens of composers, performers, and technologists are joining forces to develop this new system during COVID-19.
Performers will include: Suzanne Farrin, ondes Martenot; Alice Teyssier, voice; Ross Karre, percussion; Randall Zigler, bass; Nuiko Wadden, harp; Jacob Greenberg, piano; and Ryan Streber, sound engineer.
Farrin is a composer who explores the interior worlds of instruments and the visceral potentialities of sound. Her music has been performed by some of the great musicians of today on stages across Europe and North and South America.
Fure is an American composer and sound artist. Called “raw, elemental,” and “richly satisfying” by The New York Times, her work explores the kinetic source of sound, bringing focus to the muscular act of music making and the chaotic behaviors of raw acoustic matter.
Read more at iceorg.org and watch over 350 videos of live performances and documentaries at digitice.org.
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