Partitions And Resonances #3

Partitions & Resonances present a listening series of compositions by Wandelweiser and related composers/artists/sound artists at Audio Foundation.Curated by composer-performer Johnny Chang, the series aims to re-focus the action of listening in the context of the performance space and will take place on the last Saturday of each month.


24.04

Christian Wolff: Duo for two violins (1950)
Chang/GoGwilt: Studies on Orlando (1577 / 2021)

Keir GoGwilt, violin/composition
Johnny Chang, violin/composition

Johnny Chang and Keir GoGwilt explore some of the expressive dimensions of intonation, timbre, and counterpoint in Christian Wolff's Duo for Violins and their Studies on Orlando. GoGwilt and Chang's Studies on Orlando'' emerged from weekly sessions playing and ornamenting Orlando de Lassus's two-part motets (composed 1577). Through playing, recording, and notating these improvisations, GoGwilt and Chang have arrived at original pieces, which filter de Lassus's imitative logic through their own personal idioms.


CHRISTIAN WOLFF
Born in 1934 in Nice, France, has lived in the U.S. since 1941. Studied piano with Grete Sultan and briefly composition with John Cage. Associated with Cage, Morton Feldman, David Tudor and Earle Brown, then with Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew. Since 1952 associated with Merce Cunningham and his dance company. Taught Classics at Harvard (1962-70) and Classics, Music and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College (1971-1999). Published articles on Greek tragedy, in particular, Euripides. Writings on music (to 1998) collected in book Cues (published by MusikTexte) and in Occasional Pieces (Oxford University Press, in preparation). Active as performer, also improviser with, among others, Takehisa Kosugi, Keith Rowe, Steve Lacy, Christian Marclay, Larry Polansky, Kui Dong and AMM. All music published by C.F. Peters, New York. Much of it is recorded (Mode, New World, Neos, Capriccio, Wandelweiser, Wergo, Matchless, Tzadik, HatArt, etc.). Honors include DAAD Berlin fellowship, grants from the Asian Council, Mellon Foundation, Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer, Foundation for Contemporary Performing Arts (the John Cage award); honorary degrees from California Institute of the Arts and from Huddersfield University (UK); membership in the Akademie der Künste (Berlin), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts (Budapest); lifetime achievement award from the state of Vermont.

http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~wolff/index.html


ORLANDO de LASSUS
Living and composing in Munich, Bavaria, Orlande de Lassus (1530/32–1594) was the probably most significant, in any case the most successful and most famous composer of the second half of the 16th century. His œuvre, encompassing about 1360 compositions in prints and manuscripts, was widespread during his lifetime and long after. To this day, it is part of the repertory of numerous vocal ensembles exploring the music of the Renaissance while also being performed by amateur choirs. Lassus ranks among the most recorded composers in the history of earlier music. Numerous phonograms testify to the diversity of his work.
Lassus’ fame is well-founded: This genius of a musician catered to all spiritual and secular genres of his time. Thus, he composed motets, madrigals, chansons, German Lieder, masses, Magnificat or hymns. Time and again, his composition techniques transcended the boundaries between genres. In this way, he was actually a pioneer in the internationalisation of musical style toward the end of the 16th century. Lasso was and still is praised for his musical interpretation of the texts set to music. Not only in this context alone, reference is made time and again to the flamboyance of his compositional style.
https://www.lasso.badw.de/en/the-project.html


KEIR GoGWILT
Keir GoGwilt is a violinist and scholar whose work spans a range of disciplines. As a violinist he has been described as a “formidable performer” (New York Times) noted for his “evocative sound” (London Jazz News) and “finger-busting virtuosity” (San Diego Union Tribune). He is a founding member of the collectively run American Modern Opera Company, who have curated festivals at the American Repertory Theater, Clark Art Museum, and the Ojai Festival (2022). Additionally, he co-composes and improvises music with bassist Kyle Motl as part of their duo, Treesearch; their music has been noted for its “rich tones, rhapsodic gestures” (The New Yorker), and “clinical precision” (The Wire).
As a soloist, Keir has performed with groups including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Chinese National Symphony, the Orquesta Filarmonica de Santiago, the Bowdoin International Music Festival Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Manhattan School of Music Chamber Sinfonia, the Music Academy of the West chamber orchestra, and the La Jolla Symphony, among others. As a creative collaborator, he enjoys a number of close partnerships in which he works variously as a performer, music director, and improviser. He has ongoing projects with composers Matthew Aucoin, Celeste Oram, and Carolyn Chen, choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith, bassist Mark Dresser (as part of the Dresser Quintet/Septet), taonga puoro musician/scholar Rob Thorne, and percussionist/conductor Steven Schick. Additionally, he has performed and/or recorded with artists including Tan Dun, Nicole Mitchell, Jim Black, Joshua White, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Tobias Picker, Miranda Cuckson, and Robert Levin.
In his capacities as a recitalist, chamber musician, and creative artist, GoGwilt has been featured at festivals/series including Luminato, PS 122 COIL, Rockport Chamber Music, Spoleto (in Italy), Carolina Performing Arts, the American Repertory Theater, La Mama, National Sawdust, Darmstadt, San Diego Symphony’s “Hearing the Future,” LA Opera After Hours, Taos, and YellowBarn, and can be heard on Tzadik, Clean Feed, and 577 Records. He studied Literature at Harvard University (AB) and is currently finishing his PhD in Music at UC San Diego. He has presented lecture-recitals on baroque, galant, and contemporary music at conferences throughout the United States and Europe, and has published work in Naxos Musicology and the Orpheus Institute Series.
https://kgogwilt.com/

JOHNNY CHANG
Composer-performer Johnny Chang engages in extended explorations surrounding the relationships of sound/listening and the in-between areas of improvisation, composition and performance.

Johnny has been a part of the Wandelweiser composers collective since 2012 and in 2018, initiated a new framework for the presentation of creative research and performances, Partitions & Resonances, aimed at encouraging new and ongoing collaborations between the varied disciplines of composition, musicology, historical research and performance. He currently collaborates with: Antoine Beuger, Samuel Dunscombe, Catherine Lamb, Klaus Lang, Mike Majkowski, Phill Niblock, Derek Shirley, Germaine Sijstermans, Taku Sugimoto, Eric Wong.

As composer and performer, his articulated performances have been featured in: Staatsoper/ OperaLab//DAAD Mikromusik/MaerzMusik (Berlin), Donaueschingen Musiktage, DNK Days/Sonic Acts Festival/Muziekgebouw (Amsterdam), Gaudeamus (Utrecht), Insub.Festival/cave12 (Geneva), Cafe OTO (London), Moment Musicaux (Aarau), Dampfzentrale (Bern), Q-O2 workspace (Brussels), Wandelweiser Klangraum (Düsseldorf), Klang im Turm (Munich), Minimal Jukebox (Los Angeles Philharmonic), Pardon To Tu (Warsaw), Umlaut Festival (Berlin & Paris), Audio Foundation (NZ) to various music series/venues in Berlin such as Staatsoper unter den Linden, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, KINDL Centre for contemporary art, ausland, Labor Sonor, Sophiensaele, KM28.

https://www.wandelweiser.de/johnny-chang.html