PAIRINGS is a four-concert series of contemporary classical music produced by the Tank and curator Adam Mirza taking place each Tuesday night in November. Each concert will feature a young composer "paired" with an established composer, both of whom were chosen by the new music ensemble that will present them. The concerts will also include a short panel discussion with the featured young composer to consider the various musical interactions in play.
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Robert Morris
Chris Otto
Panel Moderator: Reiko Füting
The JACK quartet—well known for championing the works of contemporary composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Beat Furrer and Iannis Xenakis—takes an introspective look on this concert at their own violinist/composer Christopher Otto and his former composition teacher, Robert Morris. Both composers deploy intricate pitch structures yet ones based on very different "fundamentals": Christopher floats the listener over sustained harmonies tuned sweetly in just intonation, while Robert weaves together chromatic counterpoint of kaleidoscopic lyricism.
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Salvatore Sciarrino
Alex Mincek
Panel Moderator: Reiko Füting
Wet Ink takes the stage on November 10th performing music of founder Alex Mincek in combination with works by Italy's most prominent contemporary composer, Salvatore Sciarrino. Alex describes his music as "typically characterized by elements of timbral and dynamic extremes", music which "explores ways in which various forms of repetition affect our sense of time, memory and perception of difference." Temporal difference is historical in Sciarrino's music, which reaches a buoyant nostalgia by gently breathing frenetic energy into a shimmering stasis field of light and the color of the past.
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Erik Satie
Scott Wollschleger
Panel Moderator: Lisa Abbott-Canfield
Red Light New Music will conjoin the quizzical musings of Scott Wollschleger and Erik Satie. Satie's "outsider" relationship to classical music and his interest in duration had a major impact on John Cage and others in the post-war New York School. Scott's music continues this project by exploring "new creative practices and perceptions, ones which engender new ways of being a listener or a performer."
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Karlheinz Stockhausen
Adam Mirza
Panel Moderator: Lisa Abbott-Canfield
AMP will present two pieces on the final concert of the series: a new work by director Adam Mirza, for tenor saxophone, electric guitar and accordion, and Karlheinz Stockhausen's other-worldly Mikrophonie I, for large tam-tam, microphones, filters and controllers. Both works address sound as the reverberation of a physical action, the human (musical) gesture amplified, filtered and projected by instrumental embodiment.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and an award by Meet the Composers.