The legendary avant garde modern jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton makes a rare visit to San Diego via a solo performance at UC San Diego. Recognized as one of the most important musicians, educators, and creative thinkers of the past 50 years, Anthony Braxton has been widely celebrated for his revolutionary work, drawing from sources as disparate as John Coltrane, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and 12th-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen.
English violinist, Irvine Arditti, founder of the celebrated Arditti Quartet, has been a guiding influence on the string quartet medium, itself perhaps the most substantive thread in the weave of Western music tradition. His four-decade friendship with Pulitzer Prize–winning UC San Diego composer Roger Reynolds has elicited four quartets, a solo work and a chamber concerto. Now Reynolds and Arditti are collaborating on a new, large-scale work—a duo for solo violin and real-time algorithms controlled in performance by computer musician Paul Hembree. Their collaboration will be presented in a workshop where they will demonstrate the musical sources and the algorithmic strategies before giving what will be the work’s world premiere performance!
Over the course of five albums, French artist Colleen’s (aka Cécile Schott) musical repertoire has featured baroque instruments like the viola de gamba as well as modified music boxes and wind chimes, as she has pushed the boundaries of their playability. Using effects pedals and dub influences, Colleen powerfully blends the mythic, organic, and internal to weave and create intricate music about the human mind and heart.
They might play traditional Spanish-style classical guitars, but they’re not your standard guitar ensemble. Described as a “quartet with a difference” by the Irish Times, the Dublin Guitar Quartet is the first classical guitar quartet entirely devoted to new music. Since their formation, the quartet has worked to expand the genre’s limited repertoire by commissioning new works and adapting modern masterpieces. With the help of 8- and 11-string guitars, the quartet has created an original catalogue of arrangements by composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Arvo Pärt, and György Ligeti. Expect a dynamic, entertaining, and completely novel concert experience at their San Diego debut with ArtPower.
Bryce Dessner: Aheym; Philip Glass: Saxophone Quartet; Rachel Grimes: Book of Leaves; William Kanengiser: Gongan; Nikita Koshkin: Changing the Guard; György Ligeti: Inaktelki Nóták and Mátraszentimrei Dalok; Marc Mellits: Quartet; Urmas Sisask: Songs in Honour of the Virgin Mary
Hailing from Northern Estonia, fiddler/singer Maarja Nuut combines traditional dance tunes, songs, and stories with live electronics to create a space where minimalism and experimental music meet the village musical traditions of prewar Europe. Having received the 2015 Tallinn Music Week Prize and showcased at the 2014 Womex festival, Nuut is now bringing her unique renditions of Baltic folk music to her San Diego debut at ArtPower.
“Estonian fiddler Maarja Nuut takes her country’s folkloric tunes on a stunning personal journey. Her voice’s unusual pitches and repetitive phrasing form gradually shifting soundscapes.”—Chicago Tribune