Dual Rituals

“Compelling and deeply unsettling”

Partial Durations

Program Notes

Ablauf (1983/88) By Magnus Lindberg (b.1958)

For clarinet/bass clarinet and two bass drums (Peter Neville and Leah Scholes)

Ablauf (expiration) by Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg was originally written for a concert at the Sibelius Academy and was played in the lobby of the concert hall concert during intermission by clarinettist Kari Kriikku. The work is characterized by the clarinet’s dense multiphonic screams and wild flourishes, punctuated by fortissimo hits from the two bass drums, which call to each other across the space. A. Endean

A Face Like Yours By Aviva Endean

Filmed by Christie Stott

A Face Like Yours invites the audience to take part in a sonic exploration of their own face; the experience ‘amplified’ by inserting foam earplugs into their ears.  Following the visual instructions from the performer on screen the audience are led through a series of actions to create a soundscape that only they can hear. The piece leads the player through a series of thuds, flickers, hums, squishes, tingles, powerful bass tones and miniature sounds, as they explore the varied textures and sonic landscapes of their own head. A.Endean

This work was made with the assistance of Chamber Made Opera, Professional Partnerships Scholarships (VCA/MCM/Creative Victoria)

Mani. Gonxha (2012) By Pierluigi Billone

for two tibetan sounding bowls

A prayer. Mani.Gonxha is an intensely intimate ritualistic experience for the performer, who becomes naked and exposed when placed in front of an audience. It is as if one were to visit a church and find someone deep in personal prayer; this moment of great significance for the individual creates a somewhat unsettling but captivating situation for the observer. Through the use of two Tibetan singing bowls – traditionally sacred instruments used as a signal to begin and end periods of silent meditation – Billone extracts a rich soundscape featuring a variety of impacts, timbres, resonances and harmonics one would not imagine could be produced by a single source. The bowls are an extension of the hands (Mani). They become part of the performer, just as the performer himself becomes part of the resonating body. The slightest contact between various materials – metal, skin, bones, torso, and voice – multiplies and propagates sound through the performing body and into the open.

Gonxha is a reference to Mother Teresa’s Albanian birth name, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. Furthermore, Gonxhe in Albanian translates to “bud”, or the “knoblike growth on a plant that develops into a flower,” much like the elaborate sonic universe that is developed from the simple source of two singing bowls. N. Bierstone and C. Smith

 Counter-Earth by Wojtek Blecharz (Voytek Blehash)

for clarinet, voice, death whistle and electronic sounds / one performer (2015)

PART ONE

1.    All prerecorded sounds used in the first movement come from a brass, 90cm long artillery shell, brought to the United States from Israel in the 60s.

2.    Beneath mount Ida there is a cave with an old man’s statue

The statue is made of four types of metal and clay.
All parts of the statue except its golden head are fissured.

Each crack drips with tears of time.
The tears trickle down the cave and form four underground rivers.

PART TWO

“Yes, zombies! Would you like your coffee with or without sugar?”

PART THREE

1.    When odd, skull-shaped grave items were found by archeologists decades ago at an Aztec temple in Mexico, they were assumed to be mere toys or ornaments, and were catalogued and stored in warehouses. However, years later, experts discovered they were in fact ‘death whistles’ that made piercing noises resembling a human scream, which the ancient Aztecs may have used during funeral ceremonies, sacrifices, or during battles to strike fear into their enemies.

2.   Counter-Earth is a hypothetical planet always on the other side of the Sun from the Earth,orbiting 180 degrees from our planet.

To see a art film version of Counter- Earth please follow this link