Program:
- Iktus Percussion
- Ron Ford – "Shift"
- Hugo Morales Murguia – "\_/ For Amplified Triangle"
- Gyorgy Ligeti – "Poème Symphonique"
- Michel van der Aa – "Between"
- Ensemble MAE
- Robert Ashley – in memorium...Esteban Gomez
- Silvia Borzelli – Own Pace (Amnesia 3b)
- Luiz Henrique Yudo – El Camino
- Claudio Baroni – Abstract Terror
Based in New York City, the Iktus Percussion Quartet is an ambitious, dynamic young ensemble committed to expanding the boundaries of the percussion genre. As a group with strong ties to the local artistic community, Iktus is dedicated to commissioning new compositions from emerging artists. Since its inception, the quartet has commissioned over fifty new works for percussion quartet, including works by Angélica Negrón, Aaron Siegel, Lisa R. Coons, Jenny Olivia Johnson, Stefan Weisman, and Billy Martin (of Medeski, Martin and Wood), among others.
Iktus’ wide range of repertoire has brought them to perform at such venues and festivals as the Bang on A Can Marathon, Galapagos Arts Space, Le Poisson Rouge, Issue Project Room, Symphony Space, and Trinity Church. Iktus has held residencies at SUNY Purchase College, where they performed Laura Kaminsky’s Terra Terribilis, a concerto for percussion quartet and orchestra, as well as residencies at CUNY Brooklyn, and the Pre-College music program at Stony Brook University. In the Spring of 2010, Iktus was selected as a TimeOut NY Critic's Pick: Top Ten Concert of the Year, and received high acclaim from the NY Times for their performance with the St. Petersburg Chamber Symphony in Symphony Space's "Wall to Wall" series: Music of the Soviet Era.
This past summer, Iktus established Iktus+: a collective of outstanding musicians, composers and conductors that regularly collaborate with the group. As performer-educators, Iktus have also given master classes to various enthusiastic elementary school audiences. Iktus is endorsed by Mike Balter Mallets, Grover Pro Percussion and Paiste Cymbals.
Since 1980, the Dutch Ensemble MAE, formerly known as the Maarten Altena Ensemble, has developed itself from an improvisation collective into an ensemble that explores new musical and multidisciplinary territories. Straddling a broad spectrum of experimental traditions, the ensemble has built up a repertoire of over 150 works written for its particular instrumentation by composers such as founder Maarten Altena, Robert Ashley, Richard Ayres, Allison Cameron, Jack Body, Alvin Curran, Guus Janssen, Yannis Kyriakides, Martijn Padding, Steve Martland, Solex, Paul Termos, and has collaborated on projects with guest musicians such as Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, Misha Mengelberg, Roscoe Mitchell, Butch Morris, and John Zorn.
20 LP’s and CD’s have been published on labels such as X-OR, hatHUT, Claxon, Philips, Donemus, Attacca, nato and Unknown Public and performed in Japan, USA, Canada, Russia, Mexico, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Swiss, Austria, England, Sweden, Czech Republic, Belgium, Hungary and of course extensively in its country of residence, the Netherlands.
The idiosyncratic line-up of the ensemble reflects this eclecticism being made up of 9 musicians from many different backgrounds; early music, new music, pop, jazz, and improvisation and electronics; bringing their specialities together in a refreshing and original way.
Under the new artistic leadership of Yannis Kyriakides, the focus has shifted to a deeper exploration of the possibilities of expanding the sound world of an acoustic ensemble through live electronics and a desire to experiment with the way music is experienced through new performance contexts and the use of digital media. Future collaborations include an exploration of the psychoacoustic musical traditions of Alvin Lucier and Nic Collins, work with electronic composers fransisco lopez and John Wall, exploration of video narrative forms with John Oswald and Yannis Kyriakides and always the introduction of a new generation of composers, both established and lesser-known that share the ensemble’s goal of exploring new territories of musical practice.
