Event Detail

Charles Curtis
performs
Éliane Radigue: Naldjorlak for solo cello (2005)
Alvin Lucier:  Slices for cello and pre-recorded orchestra (2007-2012-2019)

Two long works for cello, made for, and with, Charles Curtis. Each to be played in its own room, and with its own cello.

Concert Hall, 7 p.m.: Radigue
In Naldjorlak, the cello is tuned to its own native resonance, the so-called "wolf tone." The performance sets forth a detailed and exhaustive investigation into the instrument's hidden resonances, following the body of the cello as both geography and musical form at once. In Salomé Voegelin's words (from The Political Possibility of Sound), Naldjorlak "performs the entanglement of composer, cello, cellist, bow and breath... the playing of the instrument activates a composition between the different resonating bodies of the space, the performer, the cello and the audience, working on an impossible yet aimed for unison."

For Radigue (born January 1932), legendary for her work with feedback, the ARP 2500 synthesizer and analog tape, Naldjorlak was the very first work for an acoustic instrument and a live performer. This collaboration led to a florescence of new works for soloists and ensembles, all created collaboratively without written score. In this collaborative model, the piece is considered non-transferable; it is not intended to be performed by anyone other than the individual for whom it was made.

Experimental Theater, 8:15 p.m.: Lucier
The range of the cello is presented as a 53-note chromatic cluster sustained by the traditional instruments of the European symphony orchestra. The soloist articulates a melodic sequence of the cluster, and with each successive note from the soloist, the corresponding orchestral instrument falls silent. In a new ordering, the reverse takes place: with each new melodic step, the orchestral instrument enters again, once again building up the arrayed cluster. This process of erasure and re-inscription is followed seven times in all.  

Lucier (born May 1931) originally conceived Slices as a piece for cello with live orchestra, as it was premiered in 2007 at Ostrava. The impracticabilities of performance led to a version with pre-recorded instruments (recorded by Tom Erbe), looped and mounted in a supercollider patch (originally written by Scott Worthington); this was first performed at the Berlin MaerzMusik in 2012. Jacob Sundstrom has now re-written the patch to accommodate as many individual channels for the orchestral instruments as possible. This performance will be the first presentation of Slices with 32 loudspeakers.