Kronos Quartet, Bang-on-a-Can, Wu Man, Gamelan Galak Tika, MIT Chamber Chorus
World-renowned new music powerhouses Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars and Chinese pipa-ist Wu Man team up with MIT's own Gamelan Galak Tika and MIT Chamber Chorus for a 5-hour marathon concert featuring works by MIT's Evan Ziporyn, Tod Machover, alum Christine Southworth, as well as Brian Eno and minimalist gurus Steve Reich & Terry Riley. Prepare yourself for a full evening of genre-bending, mind-blowing music by an army of post-modernist masters!
Curated by Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music Evan Ziporyn, the evening will bring together, for the first time ever, two trailblazing ensembles of the contemporary classical world. The Kronos Quartet, for more than 30 years, has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. In the process, the Grammy-winning Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 45 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, commissioning more than 650 new works and arrangements for string quartet, and collaborating with renowned artists of myriad disciplines and styles from around the globe. The Bang on a Can All-Stars, with their unparalleled musicality, their international touring, award-winning CDs and far ranging commissioning programs, have become one of the most powerful ambassadors for contemporary music in the world, called by the New York Times "A fiercely aggressive group, combining the power and punch of a rock band with the precision and clarity of a chamber ensemble."
Kronos and the All-Stars will present a profusion of their own signature works, all Boston premieres, and, together with MIT Chamber Chorus, will perform Brian Eno's Music for Airports, arranged by Bang on a Can composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julie Wolfe, and Evan Ziporyn. The progenitor of today's ambient music, Brian Eno's four-part electronic 1975 masterwork redefined the listening experience and challenged our notion of what – and where – music could be. Bang on a Can's arrangements imbue this cold beauty with the warmth of human breath, with voices, strings, clarinets, and guitars. As Eno himself put it, upon hearing the arrangement, "I've witnessed a birth – my original is the demo tape for Bang on a Can's version."
The concert will begin with the Kronos Quartet, presenting three groundbreaking new collaborations: the world premiere of Tod Machover's Noam Chomsky, and the Boston premieres of Christine Southworth's Super Collider, and, with pipa virtuoso Wu Man, Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic.
Performed with Gamelan Galak Tika's new Gamelan Elektrika, an electronic gamelan designed and built by Media Lab alum and video-game pioneer Alex Rigopulos, Southworth's Super Collider is inspired by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Exploring two obverse sound worlds and traditions: the vast culture of the string quartet juxtaposed with the ancient performance methods of a gamelan, unleashed through the unlimited sonic universe of electronics, Southworth creates a moment of musical collision hopefully achieving unparalleled results.
Part Two of the evening focuses on pipa virtuoso Wu Man, 'the artist most responsible for bringing the pipa to the western world," (NY Times) performing her own solo compositions, and then joining Gamelan Galak Tika for Evan Ziporyn's stunning Aradhana, a concerto for pipa and Balinese gamelan.
Part Three will feature the Bang on a Can All-stars,in the Boston premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Reich's 2×5. The piece – scored for double rock quintet – represents a major departure for Reich, combining his signature pulsating rhythms and interlocking patterns with the amplified sound of rock and roll.