Mia Clarke
Tue, 02 Jun 2009
It’s one of Chicago’s most anticipated classical events of the year: International Contemporary Ensemble teams up with percussionist and conductor Steve Schick for a performance of the music of Iannis Xenakis. The Greek composer, who died in 2001 at age 78, had a finger in many pies: The Romanian-born radical was a respected architect, philosopher, mathematician and political dissident. Xenakis’s music is exquisitely and intricately structured with astounding mathematical precision (note one of his transcriptions, pictured), yet it never sounds uptight or formulaic. On the contrary, his dense sonorities bristle and buckle in their compositional labyrinth with visceral energy that demands an emotional response.
ICE and Schick will play five of Xenakis’s large ensemble works, rarely performed live: “Psappha,” “Echange,” “Akanthos,” “Palimpsest” and his final composition, “O-Mega,” here in its Chicago premiere. The justified reputations of the musicians, themselves no strangers to groundbreaking approaches, make this show all the more enticing.
Xenakis was a true innovator whose music had just as strong an influence on noise and punk as it did on contemporary art and architecture. It will be intriguing to hear one of the 20th century’s most ingenious and graceful modernists performed by an ensemble that shares his passion for musical extremes.
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