PIANO INTERPRETATIONS

SWITZERLAND | CONCERT | NATIONAL PREMIERE

The Swiss pianist quartet composed of Duri Collenberg, Lukas Rickli, Philip Bartels and Simone Kellet continues its exploration around the political postminimalist music of Julius Eastman and the contemporary experimental music.

MARCEL ZAES
Marcel Zaes explores the ways in which rhythm forms the basis for community, that is, rhythm affords the sociality that is traditionally called “making music together,” or “dancing together,” even if no such action is involved at all. He investigates mechanical time, its politics and its socio-cultural contexts with an interdisciplinary framework that encompasses sound and media studies, new technologies, critical race studies, performance and dance studies.
Marcel’s artistic practice encompasses installation pieces, “living installations” with human performers, concert music for ensembles and electronics, and multimedia solo performances that he calls “post techno beat music.” His works consist of assemblages of self-made software codes that act as mechanical time keepers and human performers who “play along.” Most of his pieces harbor an affective potential to perceive and re-think the gap between what is congenitally conceived of as “human,” versus what is conceived of as “mechanical” temporality.
Kukuruz Quartet will play the piece “Quartet No. 10” of Swiss composer Marcel Zaes.

JULIUS EASTMAN
The powerful experimental exploration of African-American pianist and composer Julius Eastman (1940-1990) has been the target of rediscoveries and of further presentations in recent times. After playing with avant-garde SEM Ensemble, with Morton Feldman, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros or Meredith Monk, Eastman started concentrating on his own arrangements. The hypnotic sounds in which Eastman incorporated a variety of improvisational and expressionist elements defied convention and the minimalistic tendencies then established.
Being Afro-descendent and gay, the titles of some of his compositions – “Nigger Faggot”, “Crazy Nigger”, “Gay Guerrilla” and “If You So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” – are publicly and socially aggressive confrontations that in opposition to the pieces themselves they are works of meditation and intellectually stimulating. They speak for themselves when it comes to challenging serious orthodoxies.