Saturday @ 7:30pm and 9:30pm, HYDRA @ Paine Hall
* NOTE: early concert at 7:30 features student compositions, late concert at 9:30 features pieces by Spiropoulos and Tutschku:
Hans Tutschku
Herkunft-entschlüsseln-entbehren (2019) for cello and 9-channel live-electronics [ca. 20m]
Abstract
The question of where we come from, as humanity or as individuals, is always on our minds. At a time when severe living conditions at the place of family roots cause many to set off in search of better places, problems of origin, belonging, integration, and authenticity are strongly present in our perception.
In the dialogue between solo instrument and electronics, the composition processes these themes as transformed sound identities with recurring musical motifs that have to orient themselves again and again in new contexts. Necessary reorientation and the urge to preserve one’s original qualities create tension but also opportunities to grow.
Biography
Hans Tutschku is a composer of instrumental and electroacoustic music. In 1982 he joined the “Ensemble for intuitive music Weimar” and later studied theatre and composition in Berlin, Dresden, The Hague, Paris, and Birmingham. He collaborated in film, theatre, and dance productions and participated in concert cycles with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Since 2004 he has directed the electroacoustic studios at Harvard University.
Improvisation with electronics has been a core activity over the past 35 years. He is the winner of several international competitions: Hanns Eisler Preis, Bourges, CIMESP Sao Paulo, Prix Ars Electronica, Prix Noroit, Prix Musica Nova, ZKM Giga-Hertz, CIME ICEM, and Klang!. In 2005 he received the culture prize of the city of Weimar.
Besides his regular courses at the university, he has taught international workshops for musicians and non-musicians on aspects of art appreciation, listening, creativity, composition, improvisation, live electronics, and sound spatialization in more than 20 countries.
Georgia Spiropoulos
, Roll… n’Roll… n’Roll (2015) for harp and electronics [ca. 20m]
Abstract
“Roll” must be understood here within a wide field of meanings: as (sonic) flux, (perpetual) movement, (planetary) rotation, a whirlwind (or a whirling dervish), rocking (as of a newborn baby), undulation (a swell crossing the ocean), twisting, shaking, winding up, scrolling… In this cycle of pieces written for Hélène Breschand, the classical harp is a polymorphic instrument, at once acoustic and “prepared” by the computer. The harp becomes both a spatial instrument (space of listening, space of composition, an intimate sonic space projected outward) and a micro-orchestra, an archaic instrument and a sonic mobile.
A succession of mobile-forms or form-states, spatialized, repeated and disordered, stretched (in terms of their sonic spectrum as well as in time and space), Roll… n’Roll… n’Roll is a catalogue of sonic objects, a micro-geography of gestures and textures, which plays on clichés the better to subvert them.
Biography
Georgia Spiropoulos is a composer, director and multimedia artist. Her work includes acoustic, electronic and mixed compositions, multimedia spectacles and audio-visual installations. It is characterized by its dramatic intensity and contrast between a powerful physicality and a meditative use of sound. Spiropoulos’ musical language is a field of interaction among all kinds of sounds: extended instrumental techniques, singing and speaking voices, electronic sounds, field recordings and samples of pre-recorded music. The main axes of her work are the conception of musical form as the result of time-density-energy organization and an approach to composition as a field of combined practices: musical text and orality, highly worked and brut materials, high technology and lo-fi electronics. The boundary between written music and oral transmission, a deliberately unstable state, is often the basis for her collaboration with virtuoso musicians—artists open simultaneously to score interpretation, improvisation and performance.
An important part of her work includes multimedia spectacles and sound-video installations where the different arts co-exist: music, video, performance, physical movement, scenography and lighting. She constructs these music-led interdisciplinary projects at multiple artistic levels, separately and in parallel, as a composer-director-video artist. In these works, the performative-choreographic dimension of music performance is developed as a direct consequence of the sound production, its dramaturgy and urgency.
Georgia Spiropoulos taught music composition and electroacoustic music at McGill University in Montreal, Canada (2017–18) where she held the Schulich Distinguished Visiting Chair in Music and was the acting director of the Digital Composition Studios (DCS). She has been a Civitella Ranieri Fellow, the winner of the Villa Médicis Hors-les-Murs Award for New York City, and was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française. She has also worked as a research composer at IRCAM on the project “Mask: The voice transformations and computer tools for live performance” (2008). She has received many commissions (French Ministry of Culture, Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Culture, IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, Radio France, SACEM, Haus der Kulturen der Welt – Berlin, Marseille-Provence 2013 European Capital of Culture, Onassis Stegi) and her work has been played by numerous ensembles (Ensemble Intercontemporain, L’Itinéraire, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble, 2E2M, Ars Nova, Sillages, Zafraan, Aventure, Curious Chamber Players, Smashensemble, dissonArt, Sixtrum, Bl!ndman, Accentus, Les Cris de Paris, Prism) in international venues: Centre Pompidou, Cité de la Musique, IRCAM and Auditorium du Louvre (Paris), Symphony Space (New York), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Radial System V (Berlin), Gasteig München (Munich), AOI Concert Hall (Shizuoka), Pollack Hall and Le Gesù (Montreal), Felicja Blumenthal Music Center and Hateiva Hall (Tel Aviv), Concert Hall of the Academy of Music (Krakow), Onassis Stegi (Athens).