As part of the UC Santa Barbara Department of Music’s Corwin Chair Series, the Now Hear Ensemble will perform a concert of works by Alexander Schubert, Simon Steen-Andersen, Florent Ghys, and UCSB Composition alumnus Federico Llach on Sunday, January 27th at 8 pm in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall on the UC Santa Barbara campus.
Notes
Asthma (2017) // Simon Steen-Andersen
Commissioned by Andreas Borregaard and premiered at KLANG festival 2017. Borregaard says about the piece: "People breathe with lungs, the accordion breathes with the bellows. Breathing is essential for both. Through video with a soundtrack performed live, 'Asthma' shows the vivifying beauty of the flow of air, but also its horrifying features."
4 Bucolic Machines (2018) // Florent Ghys
4 Bucolic Machines is a piece in 4 movements: Woods, Basse, Robots, and Cabine. Each movement explores interactions of images and sounds. “Woods” is about associations between notes and playing techniques, and videos shot in the woods at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute residency. “Basse” replicates the effect of a scratched vinyl recording with a digital video of Federico Llach improvising on the double bass. “Robots” uses a chord progression from a piece of Baroque music along with a synthetic robot-clock. “Cabine” is made of an isorhythm combined with an unstable 16-step sequencer, and looks into a physical rotation inside a cabin at the Avaloch residency.
Borders (Sam es mi tío + I diari ) // Federico Llach
A series of works reflecting on issues of immigration: national policies, social integration, discrimination and family communications in the age of the internet.
Even when with our current mindset any attempt to imagine an alternative to world labour organization seem wishful thinking, it is also true that today, in the times of the Internet, national barriers start to feel like an outdated model. Two generations after the Gestarbeiter program boosted the growth of the Turkish community in Austria, several EU countries built fences to stop immigration – a practice also fostered by the US.
Sam es mi tío reflects on topics of immigration in the US; and I diari elaborates on immigration to the EU.
Hello (2014) // Alexander Schubert
Hello is an audio-visual piece in which the projection serves as a score to be interpreted by the ensemble. The video consists of gestures performed by the composer in his living room. The piece comes in eight movements and is an invitation into the personal world of Alexander Schubert. Please enjoy.
Photo by Gaby Goldberg