3 December 2007
Set: 1
Sergio Luque
Next weeks DNK concert features current students of the Institute of Sonology; this week we get to experience a Sonology graduate who passed through the school with distinction. Sergio Luque was born in Mexico City and is a composer using stochastic routines in the tradition of Iannis Xenakis' work. He uses Granular, Pulsar and Stochastic synthesis techniques to create highly poetic works, and is currently working towards a PhD in composition at the University of Birmingham (UK). Tonight he will play three stereo electronic works for computer including two pieces from his suite "De la incertidumbre" (From the uncertainty) (2005)...
I - Y fue que le pareció convenible y necesario (And that was that he fancied it was right and requisite).
III - Qué gigantes? (What giants?).
These pieces are loosely based on concepts from the book The History of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. In this book, the events, the persons and the objects are perceived in very different ways by all the characters: Milan Kundera affirms that this book has no characters at all, [only] egos. The uncertainty about all things, [that] nothing is sure nor permanent.
“Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God’s good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth.
“What giants?” said Sancho Panza."
Set 2:
Joel Ryan - Computer Instruments
Keir Neuringer - Saxophone
A duo of two very thoughtful individuals.
* * * *
Where do you think, serpent
Where do you lie, beneath snow,
And with eyes closed
Breathe in a crevice of earth?
In What Camera do you taste
Poison, in what darkness set
Glittering scales and point
The tipping tongue?
And were is it, you, people,
Where is it that you think, baffled
By the trash of life
Though the winters meditative light?
In what crevice do you find
Forehead's cold, spite of the eye
Seeing that which is refused,
Vengeful, shadowed by gestures
Of the life that you will not live,
Of days that will be wasted,
Of nights that will not be more than
Surly masks and destroyers?
(This is one of the thoughts
Of the mind that forms itself
Out of all the minds,
One of the songs of that dominance)
-W. Stevens
Joel Ryan is a composer, improviser, software / instrument builder, computer music maverick and computer music guru. In performances he usually processes the sounds of fellow performers with intensities which run the gamut between subtle reverberations to enhance an individual or groups raw sounds, and extreme obfuscation; where raw sounds might disappear under maximal processed clouds of sampling, layering, filtering and delaying. In California in the 60s and 70s he studied Physics and then Music, attending Stanford and Mills. This situates him at the beginning of Live electronic music and he has continued to spearhead the intersection where digital signal processing meets acoustic improvised music. He has worked extensively with Evan Parker, William Forsythe (Ballett Frankfurt) and is both a professor at the Institute of Sonology and long term associate at Steim.
Keir Neuringer (NYC) lives in Den Haag and is an improvising saxophonist and composer of electronic and acoustic music. He also writes and makes videos and installations critical of the destructive behavior exhibited and accepted by the dominant culture. He has collaborated with Joel Ryan for quite some time and amongst much solo and ensemble work he has an interesting duo with DJ Sniff.
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