Evento

Ekmeles and Friends

Friday, September 7th, 2018, at 8pm, Ekmeles vocal ensemble will perform Ekmeles and Friends, a program of works for voices augmented by exceptional instrumentalists and innovative systems of electronics. Bass clarinetist Carlos Cordeiro, trombonist Will Lang, and International Contemporary Ensembles Jacob Greenberg on celesta will join with the voices of Ekmeles. The program includes classic works by established masters of vocal and electronic music, as well as new works written expressly for Ekmeles.

Praised as a brilliant young ensemble... defining a fresh and virtuosic American sound by The New Yorker, Ekmeles will give the New York premiere of Nathan Daviss The Sand Reckoner, a characterful setting of Archimedes, as well as biblical texts and counting songs, all dealing with the notion of quantity and infinity. The singers will be augmented by Daviss ICE colleague Jacob Greenberg on celesta, as well as electronics. Ann Cleares Earth Waves, heard here its world premiere, also combines singers, instruments, and electronics. The work features trombonist Will Lang of loadbang surrounded by the singers and a custom-built system of electronics. The singers each are paired with one of an array of satellite speaker membranes, designed by the composer, distributing the sound through the space in a novel DIY approach.

Bernhard Langs Hermetica V - Fremde Sprachen is written for seven voices and bass clarinet. The work sets a hash of phonetic and semantic material, all of which is to be pronounced as if it were each individual singers mother tongue. The bass clarinet part, played here by Carlos Cordeiro of loadbang, spans the full expanded range of the instrument, functioning sometimes as the lowest bass voice of the ensemble, and sometimes doubling the highest range of the soprano.

Finally, Kaija Saariahos Tag des Jahrs sets late poems about the seasons by the quintessential German Romantic poet Friedrich Holderlin. The sweeping imagery of the texts is complemented by the composers evocative electronics that combine sounds as disparate as rain, bells, and processed speech into a coherent whole.

Each one of the pieces to be performed takes a different approach at combining voices, instruments, and electronics, negotiating a meeting between the oldest and newest ways of making music.