Tonight’s program focuses on so-called “silent music,” dramatically reductive chamber music that hovers on the edge of audibility. With strong roots in Cageian aesthetics, the principal exponents of this music are the members of the multi-national collective of composer/performer known as the Wandelweiser Group. Tonight’s program features two Wandelweiser composers, the American trombonist and composer Craig Shepard and the Dutch flutist/composer Antoine Beuger. The acclaimed pianist Joseph Kubera will also contribute several short piano works by Morton Feldman, perhaps the best known composer of quiet music and an important colleague of Cage. The remarkably quiet acoustics of the current ISSUE Project space in the (OA) Can Factory provides an extremely favorable environment in which to experience silent music.
‘We get so caught up in everything we “have” to do. And what we do when we aren’t doing what we “have” to do is so often an escape. I’m looking for something that’s not an escape from something, but an escape to something.’
– Craig Shepard
Program:
Lines - Craig Shepard
Christian Kesten, performer
Peckinpah Trios - Antoine Beuger
Christian Kesten, harmonica, Craig Shepard, trombone, Jeremy Lamb, cello
November - Craig Shepard
Joseph Kubera, piano
piano works tbd - Morton Feldman
Joseph Kubera, piano
Silent Music: Pieces on the program are on the edge of audibility.
Craig Shepard was born in 1975 in Connecticut. Performances of his compositions have been called “touchingly beautiful” (Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Berliner Zeitung) and “ab-original” (Tanja Hell, Westdeutch Zeitung). On the trombone, he has performed with Christian Wolff, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Jürg Frey, and Collegium Novum Zürich. On the sacbut, he has recorded with the Münchner Vokal Ensemble. He lives in Weehawken, New Jersey.
Antoine Beuger was born in 1955 in Oosterhout, Netherlands. He studied composition with Ton de Leeuw at Sweelinck Conservatory, Amsterdam. In 1992, he founded Edition Wandelweiser with Burkhard Schlothauer, of which he has been the managing director since 2004. Since 1994 he has been the artistic director of the concert series Klangraum at the Kunstraum Düsseldorf. His work has been performed throughout Europe and North America.
A graduate of the Peabody Institute, Jeremy Lamb has been an active orchestral cellist, playing with the Columbus, Akron, Youngstown and Mansfield Symphony Orchestras. In 2003, he was the winner of the Baltimore Music Club Competition. He has performed in masterclasses with Lynn Harrell, David Finckel and Wu Han, Matt Haimovitz, and Amidt Peled, He currently resides in New York City, where he studies privately with Alan Stepansky, former associate principal of the New York Philharmonic.
Christian Kesten lives in Berlin, Germany and works as composer, stage director, performance artist and vocalist; performances worldwide.He is member of the ensemble “Maulwerker” and has been performing Cage’s Song Books throughout Europe for the past 17 years; he co-directed and performed in a complete version at Theater Bielefeld in 2001. Recently composers like Chico Mello, Iris ter Schiphorst, Alessandro Bosetti and Makiko Nishikaze wrote operas, music theatre pieces or vocal solos for him.
About Wandelweiser (pronounced (VOHN-dell-vizor):
The Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble is an international group of composers/performers. It was founded in 1992 by Dutch-born flautist Antoine Beuger and German violinist Burkhard Schlothauer. In 1993 Swiss clarinetist Jürg Frey was invited to join, followed by American guitarist Michael Pisaro, Swiss pianist Manfred Werder, Austrian trombonist Radu Malfatti the following year, American trombonist Craig Shepard, and others. The group runs its own publishing operation, Edition Wandelweiser, and its own record label Wandelweiser Records. What holds the Wandelweiser together is a love of the music of John Cage and a commitment to continue work in experimental classical music. At the center of the group is an exchange; the composer/performers periodically come together to perform each other’s music. Some of the music that has come out of this exchange so far has included long periods of silence, sounds at the edge of audibility, and using the experience of time as a musical element.