Output details

ICElab

The ICElab project comprises three works: two versions of Omaggio a Berio for amplified ensemble, and Gurre-Klänge, a half-hour multimedia performance for soprano, singing flutist and twelve other instrumentalists, live electronics, resonating plates, and interactive video. This latter also includes two versions of a string quartet, with and without electronics: Forklarede Nat and Forklaret Nat respectively. Through experimental aspects such as live score generation, improvisation with ‘deconstructed’ instrumental parts combined with real-time video projection and interactive electronics, these works explore the transposition of textual or sung materials into sonic and visual events.

These techniques were developed in a collaborative process with the ICE ensemble and video artist Ross Karre over the course of my ICElab 2012 residency with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). It consisted principally of two sessions: a week-long workshop in March, and a week of rehearsals in December, both at the Barishnikov Arts Center in New York. The latter was preceded by two weeks of development at the Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn. The string quartet also profited from a one-week workshop period with the Arditti Quartet at the Edenkoben Residency, sponsored by the Leo Hepner Foundation.

Omaggio a Berio (Black is the colour) and Black, black, black (Omaggio a Berio) for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, viola, cello are named after the first of Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs. They create a dramaturgy by having several performers gathered around the amplified piano, playing or singing over its strings; this is the case for all of the instruments of the sextet except the cello.

Gurre-Klänge is based on Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, while the string quartet section draws upon his Verklarte Nacht. The text of Gurre-Klänge consists in part of 'homophonic translations' of J.P. Jacobsen’s Gurre-Sange (of which Schoenberg set a German translation) by poets Tony Alessandrini and Elena Tomorowitz.