This is the second in a series of three posts outlining the composers and works featured on suddenlyLISTEN’s Bozzini + 4 concert at 8pm on Tuesday, November 17 at St. Matthew’s United Church in Halifax. More information on this exciting show is found here.
Our second featured composer is Christian Wolff. Wolff is a self-taught composer (he was academically trained as a classicist, and served as professor of both classics and music at Dartmouth College from 1971 to 1999), born in 1934who studied briefly with John Cage, but whose work reflects the influences of such composers as Morton Feldman, David Tudor and Earle Brown, as well as Cornelius Cardew (recognize that name?), Frederic Rzewski and choreographer Merce Cunningham. Wolff was a member of the New York School of composers who set the classical world on edge in the 1950’s. Wolff’s music is known for the freedom it allows its performers, making for a variety of different possible outcomes in performance. As well, Wolff is known for inventing new musical notations, some so complex that the performer’s methods for navigating the score were an important part of the interpretation of the work. Wolff’s work is also marked by the composer’s belief in “freedom, self determination and democratically spirited collaboration”. Wolff said his work that is motivated by his desire "to turn the making of music into a collaborative and transforming activity (performer into composer into listener into composer into performer, etc.)…..To stir up, through the production of the music, a sense of social conditions in which we live and of how these might be changed."
For this concert we will play a selection of Wolff’s Microexercises composed in 2006. There were 22 pieces composed for any number of players, so we’ll be mixing and matching throughout!
One more post will follow soon. See you at the show!
Nov 9, 2015 at 00:58