festival: Xenakis – celebrating the life and work of composer, architect and visionary Iannis Xenakis.

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A collective of local artists have created the ‘mini-polytopes’ that will be presented each night. These installation-performances have been inspired by Xenakis’ polytopes – large-scale, site-specific, multi-media works that integrate sound, light and architecture.

Introduction by Sharon Kanach and James Harley
Sharon Kanach, a Paris-based new music specialist, was Iannis Xenakis' assistant for two decades, and leads the Centre Iannis Xenakis in France and the Xenakis Project of the Americas at CUNY. She has edited a number of books of Xenakis’ writings, including Music and Architecture by Iannis Xenakis, Architectural Projects, Texts, and Realizations (Pendragon Press, 2008), and is the author of Performing Xenakis (Pendragon Press, 2010).

James Harley is a Canadian composer presently based in Ontario, where he teaches Digital Music at the University of Guelph. He obtained his doctorate at McGill University in 1994, after spending six years in Europe. His music has been awarded prizes in Canada, USA, UK, France, Poland, Japan, and has been performed and broadcast around the world. He is the author of Xenakis: His Life in Music (Routledge Press, 2004).

Fringe Percussion (Vancouver) with Aiyun Huang (Montreal)
Iannis Xenakis, Persephassa (1969), 24’
Vancouver's premiere contemporary percussion ensemble, Fringe Percussion, will be joined by special guest Aiyun Huang for the performance of Persephassa, Xenakis’ monumental first work for percussion. Surrounding the audience, six musicians envelop the listeners in intricately interlocking sounds of percussion instruments and noisemakers.

“Following the rules of riddles, the beats are systematically displaced within further riddles, leading to great complexity of crossed rhythms, phrases which run into one another, altered accents and density.” - Col Legno Records

http://www.fringepercussion.com/home.html
http://www.aiyunhuang.com/

Lori Freedman (Montreal) + ensemble
James Harley, Breathwood, 20’
Featuring renowned clarinetist Lori Freedman, Breathwood is a new work by James Harley for amplified solo bass clarinet, ensemble and electronics, specially composed for the occasion of VNM’s celebration of Iannis Xenakis.

http://www.lorifreedman.com/
http://homepage.mac.com/james.harley/

Ensemble
Iannis Xenakis, Phlegra (1975), 13’ and Anaktoria (1969), 12’
An ensemble comprised of some of Vancouver’s finest new music performers presents two of Xenakis’ chamber works.  Phlegra, a reference to the Phlegrean fields, the site of the battle between the Titans and the new Olympian gods, is a lively work for eleven instruments.  Anaktoria, a work for, eight instruments, means “as beautiful as a palace”, and is the name of Sappho’s lover. Xenakis dedicated the piece “to love in all its forms: carnal, spiritual, logical.”

 * Performance times are approximate.

6PM
Something Rich and Strange: The Life and Music of Iannis Xenakis
UK, 1991, 50 minutes, dir. Mark Kidel
Free – no ticket required for film screening only.
A BBC documentary portrait of the life and music of Iannis Xenakis, scored with performances of Metastasis, Persephassa, Eonta, Cendrées, Polytope de Cluny, Pithoprakta, Retours-Windungen, Terretektorh, Oresteia and Keqrops.

View excerpt

8PM
mini-polytope 02
See program for Thursday, October 20, 2011; 8PM.

Introduction by Sharon Kanach and James Harley
See program for Thursday, October 20, 2011; 8:30PM.

JACK Quartet (New York)
Iannis Xenakis, ST-4/1.080262 (1956-62), 11’ and Tetras (1983), 16’
An explosive, young quartet that has been hailed by critics worldwide as one of the most exceptional new music groups to emerge on the international scene in recent years, the JACK Quartet will make their Vancouver debut at this year’s festival, performing all of Xenakis’ works for string quartet over two nights (October 21 – 22, 2011).

Xenakis’ first work for string quartet, ST/4 was an early stochastic work, composed with the aid of an IBM 7090 computer that determined note sequence, instrumentation, pitch, duration and dynamics.

Called a “riotous celebration of sound” (Alex Ross, New Yorker),Tetras, composed for the Arditti Quartet, “welds the four strings into a single, writhing, glissando-haunted super-instrument.” (Andrew Clements, The Guardian)

http://www.jackquartet.com/

Danny Tones (Vancouver)
Iannis Xenakis, Psappha (14’)
Award-winning percussionist Danny Tones performs Psappha, a piece for solo percussion that incorporates “absurdly complex interlocking timbral and rhythmic patterns, reminiscent of a one man gamelan orchestra” (Howard Goldstein, BBC Music Magazine).

http://www.danieltones.com/

Roger Admiral (Edmonton)
Robert HP Platz, trail (30’); Iannis Xenakis, Evryali (10’)
This is a special opportunity to hear works by Xenakis, Bashaw, and Platz performed over two nights by one of Canada’s premiere performers of contemporary piano music. 

Platz’ trail is dedicated to Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Manfred Eigen, whose ideas about hyper-cycles provided some inspiration for this musical work. The work features a polyphony of forms: seven musical textures that are transformed each at its own pace simultaneously within each of the seven sections.

The title Evryali can refer to “the open sea”, “Gorgon”, or “Medusa”, the one of the three Gorgon sisters in Greek mythology whose hair was turned into serpents. The work employs arborescent writing, whereby tree-shaped figures are converted into melodic lines.

http://www.rogeradmiral.com/

*Performance times are approximate.

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See program for Thursday, October 20, 2011; 8PM.

Introduction by Sharon Kanach and James Harley
See program for Thursday, October 20, 2011; 8:30PM.

JACK Quartet (New York)
Iannis Xenakis, Tetora (1990), 17’ and Ergma (1994), 9’
Also see program for Friday, October 21, 2011; 8:45PM.
Tetora is a slow-paced work that incorporates “no glissandi, no grinding noises or other effects, no trills, tremolandi, or microtones, and very little use of polyrhythms” (James Harley, Xenakis: his life in music). The result is a piece that is darker, and more brooding than the earlier quartets.

Ergma, Xenakis’ final string quartet, is a thick, but richly detailed work.  The title, meaning “finished work”, is “in deference to the austere art of Mondrian”, and the piece itself “an interesting tribute to one modernist master by another” (Harley).

"It would be hard to imagine an ensemble playing [Xenakis’ music] with greater virtuosity than the JACK Quartet, which seemed not merely earnest but also completely comfortable with, and passionate about, the strange sound worlds at hand." - Allan Kozinn, New York Times

http://www.jackquartet.com/

Danny Tones (Vancouver)
Iannis Xenakis, Rebonds (1987-88), 12’
A “ritualistic web of complex rhythms”, Rebonds is a demanding solo work for tom-toms, conga, bongos, bass drums and wood blocks. Rebonds’ two movements, A and B, are intended to be played in either order, flowing into each other as a single piece.

http://www.danieltones.com/

Roger Admiral (Edmonton)
Iannis Xenakis, Mists (1980), 12’ and Herma (1960-61), 7’; Howard Bashaw, Form Archimage (2001/2010), 16’
Herma, labeled as “symbolic music” by Xenakis, combines set theory principles with probability calculus, one of the results being a contrast between linear structures and clouds of pitches. This contrast can be heard again in Mists; a work created in part using mathematical logic functions, in which ascending scales at different tempos are alternated with light clouds of pointillistic tones.

The three movements of Howard Bashaw’s composition, Form Archimage, shift from “roller-coaster-like excursions up and down the keyboard” to kaleidoscopic pulse-streams that “surround you like hovering clocks”, with the final movement being described as “a real barn-burner” (Marc Couroux). Giorgio Magnanensi will collaborate with Admiral to deliver an interactive audio-visual performance in which he generates visuals from the sounds and movements of the performer.

http://www.rogeradmiral.com/

*Performance times are approximate.