“Outstanding musicianship, intuition for contemporary trends and well-thought-out programmes”, were among the reasons given by the jury for awarding the prestigious Ernst von Siemens prize to the England-based Riot Ensemble last year.
We didn’t wait for that award to engage them for Transit (if a year later than first planned) along with the co-commission for a new work by no one less than Chaya Czernowin. It will be a dark piece, for solo bass clarinet and an ensemble of mostly low instruments. Adding the Icelandic sounds of Bára Gísladóttir and Clara Iannotta’s Mediterranean colours guarantees an exciting evening.
Program
Bára Gísladóttir: Animals of your pasture (premiere)
Clara Iannotta: They let us grief-trees wailing at the wall
Chaya Czernowin: Fast Darkness I: I can see your turned eyes from inside your body
CO-PRODUCTION WIEN MODERN, HUDDERSFIELD CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FESTIVAL RIOT ENSEMBLE
Composers
Chaya Czernowin
Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin studied and worked in Germany, the US, Austria and Japan throughout the years. Her music is marked by unfamiliar sound worlds, the use of noise and physical parameters as weight, textural surface, problematization of time and unfolding and shifting of scale in order to create a vital, visceral and direct sonic experience. She aims to reach a music of the subconscious which goes beyond style conventions or rationality.
Clara Iannotta
Clara Iannotta is an Italian composer and curator based in Berlin. Her music is commissioned and performed by renowned ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, including Quatuor Diotima, Ensemble Intercontemporain, JACK, Klangforum Wien, a.o. Iannotta has been a fellow of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD in 2013, Villa Médicis (Académie de France à Rome) in 2018–19, and the recipient of several prizes. Since 2014, Iannotta has been the artistic director of the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, and from 2022 will be the co-artistic director of the festival Klangspuren Schwaz.
Bára Gísladóttir
The works of Bára Gísladóttir are characterised by a deep and self-reflecting calm, at times producing an almost meditative state in the music. In her pieces time is as likely to move in circles as it is moving forwards towards a distinct goal. Whether writing for acoustic instruments or electronics, Gísladóttir is especially concerned with the rich details of sounds. Thus, overtones, liminal registers and multiphonics play an essential part in her works, creating an atmosphere of slowly progressing mystery.
Performers
Riot Ensemble
The Riot Ensemble connects people to great contemporary music in concerts and events that are just as innovative, vibrant and rewarding as the music itself. The members of Riot are some of the top European soloists in new music, and with Riot they work as performers, curators, commissioners, and collaborators, creating and producing a diverse array of projects. Based in London, Riot is particularly active in bringing emerging international voices to the British new-music scene and since 2012 has given over 200 World and UK premieres by composers from more than thirty countries. They enjoy close working relationships with some of the most important composers of our time, including Clara Iannotta, Chaya Czernowin, Ann Cleare, and Georg Friedrich Haas.
Gareth Davis
Gareth Davis is an artist, composer and musician living in Amsterdam. He plays bass clarinet (mostly), the result of a somewhat impulsive purchase whilst window shopping in Covent Garden, London. Activity covering sonic art and contemporary classical music through rock, improvisation and noise with collaborations that have included the premiering of new written pieces by composers such as Bernhard Lang, Peter Ablinger and Jonathan Harvey, soloist with orchestras including the SWR Symphonieorchester and Warsaw Philharmonic, performances with groups and performers ranging from the Neue Vocalsolisten and Arditti Quartet through to improvisers Elliott Sharp and Frances Marie Uitti, electronic artists Robin Rimbaud and Merzbow and multimedia work with artists including Christian Marclay and Peter Greenaway.
STUK
Naamsestraat 96
3000
Leuven
Parking
H. Hartkliniek, Naamsestraat 102c
Bus
Lijnen 1 en 2
Halte H. Hartkliniek
Not on time?
Late-comers will not be admitted to the concert.