Table Music – Thierry De Mey – Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi, Venice
| From April to June, Palazzo Grassi in Venice presents Dancing Studies, a cycle of original performances by major international choreographers invited around the exhibition “Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies”. Among four performances to be performed in the different spaces of the Pinault Collection in Venice and at COSMO, Campo San Cosmo, the Percussions de Strasbourg will present Table Music by Thierry De Mey. Table Music (1987) “is a piece for percussion as well as a short choreography of hands. It’s constructed like a baroque suite, with an overture, rondo, fugato, galop, recapitulation, and coda. The entire rhythmic counterpoint uses a limited number of figures that are described precisely, but metaphorically as well, to the performers : both musicians/dancers […] in this piece I was already using, more or less wildly, the notion of ‘rhythmic imprint’, [that is], I would replace the silences in a given figure with beats and vice versa, to create complementary rhythms that each hinted at the other.” (Thierry de Mey about Table Music in an interview conducted by Jean-Luc Plouvier, 2001) “The challenge of Table Music is to approach the sensitive line between music and the gestures that produce sound, to put your finger on the line of demarcation between dance and music: the visual and choreographic aspect in perfect balance of importance with the sound and the musicality of the interpretation.” (excerpt from the sheet music note) Saturday 02 and Sunday 03 April 2022 – Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi, Venice (Italia) |
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100 cymbals – Ryoji Ikeda – Gropiaus Bau, Berlin – Concert Hall Amare, The Hague
One evening, ten percussionists, one hundred cymbals for a show that combines visual, conceptual and musical performance. Or when, from abstraction and pure sound, light and harmony are born.
A simple brass and bronze disc, which is used more to underline a strong moment than to take centre stage, the cymbal plays the leading role here! Created in 2019 in Los Angeles, 100 cymbals brings out the multitude of harmonic layers of the instrument. A key figure in electronic music and art, composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda is known for mixing physical phenomena with mathematical notions. As for the Percussions de Strasbourg, they have been one of the leading groups in contemporary music since their creation in 1962. 100 cymbals will be preceded by But what about the noise of crumpling paper…, a sound portrait that John Cage dedicated in 1985 to the founder of the Dada movement, Hans Arp.
Concert on March 25 at 8pm and 10pm at the Gropius Bau Museum in Berlin, Germany, as part of the MaerzMusik festival
Info and booking
Concert on April 08 at 7 pm at Amare Concert Hall in The Hague, as part of the Rewire festival
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Pléiades & Persephassa – Iannis Xenakis – Megaron, Athens – Concert Hall, Thessaloniki
At the same time a composer (a student of Olivier Messiaen), architect and engineer (a collaborator of Le Corbusier from 1947), and a mathematics and computer science enthusiast (creator of the UPIC), he was a pioneer in many fields, such as electroacoustic music, computer music, and the immersive electronic concert.
A lover of Greek Antiquity, “born twenty-five centuries too late” as he said, Xenakis was nevertheless a creator at the cutting edge of the most radical modernity. His musical and architectural work reflects the permanent crossing of disciplines.
In April, the Percussions de Strasbourg will fly to Greece, where they will perform two exceptional concerts in Athens and Thessaloniki. They will play the program from their latest book-disc, Pleiades and Persephassa.
Concert on April 10 at 9 pm at the Megaron, Athens
infos and booking
Concert on April 12 at 8:30 pm at Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Thessaloniki
infos and booking
Concert “Best of” répertoire – théâtre de Hautepierre
New concert by the Percussions de Strasbourg at the Hautepierre Theatre:
On March 31, 2022, the Percussions de Strasbourg will honour both cult pieces from their repertoire, of which there have been many performances during their 60 years of existence, and a new creation. This anniversary year was the ideal pretext for highlighting these pieces, which have become fundamental for today’s percussion. In the 1960s, Maurice Ohana and Miloslav Kabelac paved the way for the composition of pieces for percussion. Initially, these pieces were intended to accompany dance performances. Today, freed from dance, these works have their own identity and narrative, and bear witness to early research in the field of percussion.
Many talented composers set out on this road, with the complicity and expertise of the Percussions de Strasbourg. Thirty years later, Philippe Manoury, a composer from Strasbourg, created Métal, a sextet for sixxens, the instruments invented by Iannis Xenakis specifically for the Ensemble. Always concerned with today’s creation, Les Percussions de Strasbourg also offer the opportunity to discover the work of Maurilio Cacciatore who develops and explores the sound possibilities of the vibrating baton, a unique tool in the world, in his piece Corale.
The Percussions de Strasbourg welcome you to the Théâtre de Hautepierre in the district where the group has been established for over 40 years.
Fast food and a bar will also be available for a convivial evening.
Concert on March 31 at 8pm at théâtre de Hautepierre, Strasbourg, France
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Pléiades & Persephassa – Iannis Xenakis – Philharmonie de Paris
If there is one field in which the creative imagination of Iannis Xenakis has been amply developed, it is that of percussion. His collaboration with the Percussions de Strasbourg gave rise to two masterpieces, Persephassa (1969) and Pléiades (1979).
A reference to the eponymous constellation as much as to the figurative meaning of the name, Pléiades explores the entire spectrum of percussion (mixtures, metals, keyboards and skins) and introduces the sixxen, a new instrument between mountain bells, church chimes and Balinese gamelans. The formal intricacies of the work are at least as skilful as the alternately melancholic, hectic and frenetic rhythms that it unfolds without respite. With its title evoking Persephone, goddess of the rebirth of nature in spring, Persephassa is intended for an open-air performance. By moving the six performers away from each other, Xenakis rediscovers his architectural instinct to stage a ‘sound choreography’.
This concert is part of the celebrations for the centenary of the composer’s birth.
Watch and listen live and replay on ARTE Concert and Philharmonie Live
Concert on March 19 at 8.30pm at Philharmonie de Paris, France
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Release of the CD-Booklet Pleiades & Persephassa, Iannis Xenakis
PLEIADES & PERSEPHASSA, IANNIS XENAKIS
The story of an exceptional encounter between a composer and a group of performers.
“Through these two pieces and their richness, we have an incredibly open and wide range of play and appropriation for the performer. In Persephassa, the performer is an element of a relentless mechanic, subject to a controlled structure; in Pleiades, the performer is an actor of events, embodying and carrying them in this inexorable movement that pushes us forward. But whether it is for one piece or another, the pleasure of playing, of the sound and of the group are the same, and beyond the pieces themselves, it is above all what we hear in this interpretation carried by the Percussions de Strasbourg, this recording alone being able to define what this ensemble is in its cohesion, its desire, its imagination, its enthusiasm, its talent.
Between the 1970s with its historic recordings and today, there is finally only one more step, a step added to those of the four generations who have participated in this crazy adventure, one more step like a relay passed from generation to generation, if only to ensure that the movement initiated by all the composers who have written for the Percussions de Strasbourg, and in the forefront of whom is Iannis Xenakis, never stops.”
Jean Geoffroy