Paris-based clarinetist Carol Robinson and American-born Dutch cellist Frances-Marie Uitti are esoteric and virtuosic performers, equally at ease in the classical and experimental realms. Their many parallel years of collaborations originate from their work with Giacinto Scelsi, and they have worked with countless other contemporary composers internationally. Both composers themselves, the pair have worked extensively on original works and techniques that have expanded the fields of their respective instruments through electronics. Here they give a free lecture presentation on their work with musical examples.
Carol Robinson: Composing with Random Generators
Lecture with excerpts from:
Laima (2008) - basset horn with live electronics
5 Siepi Songs (2010) - voice with aleatory quadraphonic percussion system
Cross-Currents (1998) - basset horn with spatialized aleatoric system
Frances-Marie Uitti: Strips, Tubes and Code
Composer and clarinetist, Carol Robinson has a multifaceted musical life. Equally at ease in the classical and experimental realms, she performs in major concert halls and international festivals (Wien Modern, RomaEuropa, MaerzMusik, Huddersfield, Archipel, Angelica, Musica Contemporanea, etc.). In addition to working closely with composers, she pursues the new in more alternative contexts, collaborating with video artists, photographers, and musicians from divers horizons. The freely converging musical world of her group SLEEPING IN VILNA (with Mike Ladd – poetry, Dave Randall – guitar, Dirk Rothbrust – drums) is typical of what interests her. Improvisation is her passion. Carol Robinson plays all types and sizes of clarinets, including more exotic instruments such as the Lithuanian birbyne.
She began composing by writing for her own music theater productions, subsequently receiving commissions for concert pieces, installations, radio, dance and film productions. Her works often combine acoustic sounds with electronics, and her musical aesthetic is strongly influenced by a fascination for aleatoric systems. Her works have been recorded by the Hessischer Rundfunk, Saarlandischer Rundfunk, Lithuanian National Radio, and Radio France. A CD of her composition Billows, for clarinets and live electronics, was released on PLUSH. Other recent releases include solo monograph recordings of music by Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman, Luigi Nono, and Luciano Berio for MODE, Phil Niblock for TOUCH as well as classical music and jazz for SYRIUS, BTL and NATO. Cross-Currents, an aleatoric musical system intended for installation on personal computers, will soon be released on SHIIIN, with support from IRCAM.
Frances-Marie Uitti, composer/performer, pioneered a revolutionary dimension to the cello by transforming it for the first time into a polyphonic instrument capable of sustained chordal (two, three, and four-part) and intricate multivoiced writing. Using two bows in one hand, this invention permits contemporaneous cross accents, multiple timbres, contrasting 4-voiced dynamics, simultaneous legato vs articulated playing. György Kurtág, Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, Jonathan Harvey, Richard Barrett, Horatio Radulescu, Annie Gosfield, Lisa Bielawa are among many who have used this technique in their works dedicated to her.
Collaborating significantly over years with radicals, Dick Raaijmakers, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi, she has also worked closely with Iannis Xenakis, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough and countless composers from the new generation. She tours as solist extensively throughout the world having played for audiences from New York City to Mongolia and appears regularly in such festivals as the Biennale Di Venezia, Strasbourg Festival, Gulbenkian Festival Ars Musica, Holland Festival and for radios and televisions in Europe, Japan, and the United States. She premiered cello concerti dedicated to her by Per Norgaard, Dick Raaijmakers, Jonathan Harvey, James Tenney, Peter Nelson and gave the first performance of the cello concerto of William Jeths in 2000. She premiered the newly discovered concerto by Giacinto Scelsi in 2008.
She's collaborated with pianist Rolf Hind, been featured in films by Frank Scheffer and Frans Zwartjes, played with Elliott Sharp, Pauline Oliveros, DJ Scanner, DJ Low, and Stephen Vitiello and video masters Noisefold. Her compositons can be heard on ECM records, Wergo, CRI, Cryptogrammophone, JdKrecords, Seraphin, Etcetera, Miasmah, and BVHaast.
