IMPOSTO - Program
Angel Grindr: Pallindrome
This work consists of a live soundtrack fro the 1969 experimental silent film “Pallindrome” by New York avant garde filmmaker Hollis Frampton, whose work is associated with pioneering work in the development of the structuralist film movement in the 1960’s. Angel Grindr’s performance explores the film’s interplay between rhythm and light, and will be rife with thick, percussive textures and the sort of tranquility that can only be achieved when your head has been placed in a washing machine.
Anon: Ave Maris Stella
Text: Latin text of the Medieval (8th Century) Marian hymn in the Liturgy of the Hours of the Roman Rite (Vespers)
Laura Vaughan: The Velvet Deep
Space, depth and stillness - an endless expanse of starry black above, a peaceful inky depthless ocean below with flashes of silver scales. Floating gently in between, a little boat.
The Velvet Deep uses the unique resonance and shimmer of the baryton to explore the sense of space shot through with the glitter of stars and fish evoked by this image, anchored by the ancient Marian hymn Ave maris stella.
Richie Bell: perimedusæ
Ascension—be that of surfacing Jellyfish or Consciousness— is not straightforward; we are upside-downed-back-to-fronted-inside-outed-roundabouted all in the name of growing awareness. Van den Ende’s diptych sparks a multidimensional dialogue; in response, the voice embodies a simple gesture containing a series of sequences hidden in picture poem sea creatures. Written especially for Anna Fraser, perimedusæ straddles her private experience transmitted to a collective, the focal point of which is an illuminated, floating mouth. As she painstakingly articulates an upward evolution, pitched material designates the transitions of her instrument and a seemingly disparate sonic rhetoric builds a word never fully realised; the collective noun for jellyfish: fluther.
Satsuki Odamura: 間 Hazama (Between)
The Japanese word Ma captures the universal concept of a “gap" or "space" between people, ideas and objects. Ma is an alluring aspect of Japanese culture that includes includes art, flower arranging , architecture and in the musical context means the “space between two notes”. It is in this space or silence in the music that one listens to the fading notes or feels the tension. Being conscious of Ma stimulates the imagination and heightens awareness of intangible things around us that are not always obvious, in music and all aspects of cultural life.
Text: haiku and prose by 清少納言 Seishounagon (966—1025), 藤原公任 Fujiwara no Kintou (966—1041), 紫式部 Murasaki Shikibu (973—1014)
Audrey Ormella: Ice Giant
A solo voice calls across a silent ocean; the Wanderer is searching. The temperature drops, and icy fragments drift around them as they continue, happening suddenly upon the Ice Giant. The Wanderer calls out again to the frigid landscape, syllabic fragments buzzing against the icy, metallic pinging, a disembodied human voice echoing back and forth across the body of the frozen monolith. The scale of the giant body becomes imposing, suddenly overwhelming with ancient presence. Flourishes of movement and breathless voices convey growing anxiety, before the Wanderer slinks away, leaving the memory of the Ice Giant behind.
Jane Sheldon: Aurora: ode to Vayu
This work for two sopranos, bass koto, baryton, and electronics, is a response to an illustration from Peter van den Ende’s The Wanderer. His drawing depicts auroras dancing over the open ocean, observed by the occupant of a solitary paper boat, blown by cold Northern winds to arrive under this gorgeous display. The music is conceived as an ode to the wind gods that blew this fragile vessel to such an encounter, and the texts for this piece celebrate Boreas and Zephyros (from the Greek traditions), Fujin (from Japan), and Vayu (from the Hindu tradition). The fixed media is constructed from processed bells and whispered fragments of language, specifically the word you, devotionally reiterating in Greek, Japanese, and Hindi.
Text: ‘To Boreas’ from The Orphic Hymns (late Hellenistic C3rd - 2nd BC or early Roman C1st - 2nd AD)
Kaija Saariaho: From the Grammar of Dreams
Text: Sylvia Plath (excerpts from ‘The Bell Jar’ and fragments of the poem “Paralytic” from the poetry collection ‘Ariel’)
Tadao Sawai: Yureru Aki (Wind)
Text: 北原 白秋 Hakushū Kitahara (1885—1942)