mica

Das ACF - Austrian Cultural Forum New York, mica - music austria und the Argento New Music Project präsentieren ein dreitägiges Festival im ACF - New York und im Le Poisson Rouge. Das Programm wurde von Peter Rantasa, Direktor von mica - music austria, und Michel Galante, Direktor des Argento New Music Project kuratiert.
Die Beteiligung  am Festival Moving Sounds ist eine weitere Aktivität von mica - music austria österreichische Musikschaffende im Ausland zu präsentieren. Auch in den nächsten Jahren soll auf diesem Festival zeitgenössische Musik aus Österreich und den USA präsentiert werden bis hin zu gemeinsamen Projekten von KünstlerInnen aus beiden Ländern.

Pressemeldung des ACF - New York:

AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM NEW YORK,
MICA - MUSIC AUSTRIA
and THE ARGENTO NEW MUSIC PROJECT

present

MOVING SOUNDS
a festival devoted to sound and its roles in contemporary music
12 - 14 September, 2009

Moving Sounds is a 3-day festival of music, visual media and aesthetic dialogue, produced jointly by the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Music Information Center Austria (mica - music austria), and the Argento New Music Project. The festival creates a forum for dialogue about sound. What is the relationship between sound and music? Can new theories of sound transform traditional ideas of "popular" and "classical" music? Through concerts, symposia, and social environments, the festival explores sound and its musical and sociological implications.

Moving Sounds features world premiere performances of works by Bernhard Lang and Beat Furrer, two landmark contemporary Austrian composers; new pieces from emerging American composers Sam Pluta and Elizabeth Hoffman; and a performance of Steve Reich's seminal minimalist work, Music for 18 Musicians. The acclaimed Argento Chamber Ensemble, the TimeTable Percussion Trio, and the JACK String Quartet perform these programs live. Their musicians collaborate with well-known Austrian DJ artists Christopher Just, Dorian Concept, and turntablist dieb13. Visual art is key to Moving Sounds as well. The exhibition sound:frame Vienna gives viewers a taste of Vienna's VJ (video performance artist) scene; VJ Astrid Steiner performs live, and a prescreening takes place of Andrew Standen-Raz's documentary film "Vinyl." The festival is co-curated by Peter Rantasa, Director of mica - music austria, and Michel Galante, Director of the Argento New Music Project.

All events take place at The Austrian Cultural Forum New York, 11 East 52nd Street, New York, NY 10022, and at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012. Founded by musicians, Le Poisson Rouge is a multimedia art cabaret on the site of the historic Village Gate. Its mission is to revive the symbiotic relationship between art and revelry, and to establish a creative asylum for both artists and audiences. Concerts at LPR will take maximal advantage of the venue's state-of-the-art sound system that includes 32 Meyer Sound speakers.

Please see below for a schedule of events for Moving Sounds, information about ticket availability and prices, and profiles of the artists and ensembles.

LOCATIONS for concerts, panel discussions, and parties:

Austrian Cultural Forum
11 East 52nd Street
New York, NY 10022

Le Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street
New York, NY 10012

PROGRAM FOR SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009

4:00 PM at the Austrian Cultural Forum
sound:frame:remix , an exhibition curated by Eva Fischer
Free and open to the public

The exhibition features installations and video works by high-profile visual artists from around the world, offering a journey through current approaches to visualizing electronic music.

5:00 -6:00 PM at the Austrian Cultural Forum
DJ Dorian Concept, with live video projection by Astrid Steiner
Free and open to the public

The young Austrian DJ Dorian Concept has made a name for himself at the most forward-thinking beat parties around Europe. Infused with childlike playfulness, Dorian's mix of sticky funk and twisted electronic chord changes pays tribute to experimental hip-hop, jazz, funk, and electronica.

Astrid Steiner, aka VJ Luma, has enlightened the screens of Austrian and German techno clubs and classical music venues alike with her creations of surreal landscapes and graphical journeys. Her mixing and composition of the video clips happens live, making every show different and unique.

7:00 - 8:30 PM at Le Poisson Rouge
Argento Chamber Ensemble

Program:
Bernhard Lang, Differenz/Wiederholung 2 (U.S. PREMIERE)
Beat Furrer, Xenos II for narrator and 20-person chamber ensemble (WORLD PREMIERE)

Tickets:
$20, available online at the door, at Website of Le Poisson Rouge, or by calling (212) 505-3474.

Bernhard Lang'sDifferenz/Wiederholung 2 (Difference/Repetition 2) features a trio of an opera singer, a Kurdish Makam singer and a rapper accompanied by an electro-acoustic chamber orchestra of 14 musicians. Lang is one of the most revered composers of the contemporary European avant-garde, and in his powerful use of repetition, he juxtaposes the aesthetics of turntablism with the idiom of classical works. Lang introduces the work before Argento's performance.

Beat Furrer'sXenos II is a cutting-edge work for narrator and 20-person chamber orchestra. Its musical source is a computer-generated analysis of Furrer's own speaking voice. From this spectrogram, Furrer extracts certain frequencies, amplitudes (volumes), and timbres, and his piece is scored for instruments that uncannily re-create the presence of the original voice. In this performance, Furrer himself performs in the narrator's role.

The Argento Chamber Ensemble is the performance arm of the Argento New Music Project. The ensemble performs compositions that embody pressing musical concerns in Western music. Consisting of nine core members, the ensemble regularly expands to perform and record chamber orchestra works of up to 30 musicians. They have toured widely in the US and abroad, in festivals including the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the International Festival of Spectral Music, Istanbul, the American Festival of Microtonal Music, the Sounds French Festival, the Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland, and Shanghai's International Festival of Electroacoustic Music. Argento has worked closely with leading composers such as Pierre Boulez, Tania Leon, Tristan Murail, Elliott Carter, Philippe Hurel, Gerard Pésson, Joshua Fineberg, and Philippe Leroux.

9:00 PM at Le Poisson Rouge
Mantra Percussion and Friends

Program:
Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians

Tickets:
$20, available at the door, at lepoissonrouge.com/calendar/2009/9, or by calling (212) 505-3474.

Formed in September 2007, Mantra Percussion commissions pieces by prominent composers to expand the percussion repertoire, commissions young composers to breathe new life into the art, and also performs classic repertoire. Members of Mantra Percussion have performed at the Lucerne Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, Bang on a Can Summer Music Institute, Darmstadt, the International Ensemble Modern Academy, and Tanglewood. For more information, go towww.myspace.com/mantrapercussion.

11:00 PM at the Austrian Cultural Forum
Party
Free and open to the public

PROGRAM FOR SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

11:00 AM - 4:00 PM at the Austrian Cultural Forum
Symposium
Free and open to the public

4:30 - 6:00 PM at the Austrian Cultural Forum
Screening ofVinyl, a documentary film by Andrew Standen-Raz
Free and open to the public

"A day in the year in the life of Vienna cool," Andrew Standen-Raz's Vinyl documents a moment in the city's history when falling borders between east and west created a fertile ground for musical fusion. The film's pace matches the styles of the music it portrays: fast-flowing electronic beats, ambient chill grooves, and the sparse sounds of the experimental underground. Vinyl is intercut and overlapping, a portrait of the dynamic ebb and flow of a city in transition. Director Andrew Standen-Raz will be present at the prescreening.

7:30 PM at Le Poisson Rouge
TimeTable PERCUSSION TRIO, with DJ Christopher Just

Program:
Sam Pluta, piece for percussion trio and live electronics (WORLD PREMIERE)
Beat Furrer, Music for Mallets for 3 mallet stations
DJ Christopher Just, mix on Beat Furrer's Music for Mallets
Elizabeth Hoffman, Vissera for percussion trio and live electronic sounds (WORLD PREMIERE)
Hoffman, Alchemy(NEW YORK PREMIERE)
Bernhard Lang, Monadologie IV for 3 drummers (WORLD PREMIERE)

Known for its riveting performances of new and experimental music, TimeTable specializes in music that crosses boundaries of style and discipline, with an emphasis on works that challenge the language and materials of percussion music. This concert is no exception: TimeTable performs the music of leading avant-gardists Beat Furrer and Bernhard Lang, composer/improviser Sam Pluta, and emerging electro-acoustic composer Elizabeth Hoffman, and collaborates with rave and techno DJ Christopher Just. TimeTable's members are Matthew Gold, Alex Lipowski, and Matt Ward.

9:00 PM at Le Poisson Rouge
DJ dieb13 and Bernhard Lang
Party to follow, DJ by Christopher Just

Since the late 1980s, dieb13 has worked continuously in rendering cassette players, vinyls, cd's and harddisks into instruments, and performed at various international festivals and locations including: phonotaktik wien, sonicacts amsterdam, beyond innocence osaka, lmc festival london, electrograph athens, maerzmusik berlin, kammermusiktage witten, musiktage donaueschingen, wien modern, musee de art moderne strasbourg, worldinformation.org beograd, turningsounds warszawa, piksel bergen, donaufestival krems, and batofar paris.

Tickets for TimeTable and party to follow:
$15, available at the door, at lepoissonrouge.com/calendar/2009/9, or by calling (212) 505-3474.

PROGRAM FOR MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

4:00 - 5:30 PM at the Austrian Cultural Forum
Panel discussion and symposium

6:00 PM at the Austrian Cultural Forum
Argento Chamber Ensemble

Program:
Elizabeth Hoffman, PR for electronic sounds (WORLD PREMIERE)
Georg Friedrich Haas, Ein Schattenspiel for piano and electronics
Michael Klingbeil, Subterrain for clarinet, 3 strings and electronics
Beat Furrer, Fama Scene VI for soprano and contrabass flute (U.S. PREMIERE)
Bernhard Lang, Morendo for bass flute and electronics (U.S. PREMIERE)
Furrer, Aria for soprano, clarinet, percussion, piano and strings (U.S. PREMIERE)

Soprano Sharla Nafziger and flutist Erin Lesser perform the U.S. premiere of Scene VI from Beat Furrer's recent opera Fama. In this isolated movement, the vocal line is accompanied by a contrabass flute, an extremely rare instrument that is taller than the performer and wraps around her entire body. Ms. Lesser will also perform the U.S. premiere of Bernhard Lang's Morendo for bass flute and electronics. Lang constructed Morendo from an unfinished work by tragically neglected composer Roman Haubenstock-Ramati. Ms. Nafziger sings and Michel Galante conducts the closing work on the program, Beat Furrer's fast-paced Aria .

The program further includes a world premiere of PR by American acousmatic composer Elizabeth Hoffman; Subterrain, an electroacoustic concerto for clarinet, strings, and electronics, by Argento's resident composer Michael Klingbeil, featuring clarinettist Carol McGonnell; and Austrian spectral composer Georg Friedrich Haas's Ein Schattenspiel (A Shadow), a work for piano and electronics in which a piano dialogues with a microtonal electroacoustic rendering of itself, performed by pianist Joanna Chao.

7:30 PM at the Austrian Cultural Forum
Argento Chamber Ensemble

Repeat of the 6:00 PM performance

9:00 PM at Le Poisson Rouge
The JACK Quartet

Program:
Beat Furrer, Quartet #3
Aaron Cassidy, String Quartet

The concert will be followed by the Moving Sounds Ending Party, with DJs Dorian Concept and Christopher Just.

Tickets: $15, at the door, at Le Poisson Rouge Website , or by calling (212) 505-3474.

The JACK Quartet has established a reputation for giving high-energy performances of today's most demanding works for string quartet. The New York Times called its performance of Iannis Xenakis's complete string quartets one of the "most memorable classical music presentations of 2008." In 2009, the quartet received an ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. The quartet's members are violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland . They have worked closely with American composer and conductor Aaron Cassidy, whose String Quartet appears on their program at Le Poisson Rouge. Cassidy's music is characterized by an uncompromising dedication to instability and fragmentation.