Callithumpian Consort: Lucier, Finnissy, & Cage

NEC faculty Stephen Drury created the Callithumpian Consort in the belief that new music should be an exciting adventure shared by performers and listeners alike, and that the brand new masterpieces of our day are beautiful, sensuous, challenging, delightful, provocative, and a unique joy.

Callithumpian’s repertoire is the new and unusual, encompassing a huge stylistic spectrum from the classics of the last 100 years to works of the avant-garde and experimental jazz and rock. It is grounded in the musical discoveries of John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Zorn, Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman, and Iannis Xenakis.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Boston Cultural Council and administered by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, as well as by a grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

Watch Live Stream from Williams Hall:

Ensembles
  • Callithumpian Consort

  1. Alvin Lucier | Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings (1995)

    Alvin Lucier's Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings is more of an inspiration for exploration than a conventional score. The piece is performed exclusively inside the instrument, using ebows (most familiar through their use by rock guitarists) which magnetically vibrate or "bow" the strings, creating resonances which combine and ring against each other.

    Artists

  2. Michael Finnissy | from Extra Goldbergs (2020) - first performance

    No. 4
    No. 5
    No. 6

    Michael Finnissy, who has been twice a guest at NEC's Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice, created three of his variations (there are a total of twelve as of this writing) which extend Bach's well-known Goldberg Variations for SICPP Piano Faculty Yukiko Takagi.

    Artists
    • Yukiko Takagi, piano

  3. John Cage | Two2 (1989)

    Most of John Cage's late "number" pieces use time-brackets, measured by the performers using stopwatches. Inspired by a conversation with the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina who was distracted by the use stopwatches in performance and remarked "there is an inner clock", Cage created a rhythmic scheme for Two2 which, uniquely, does without chronometric measurement. The chords that are played by the two pianos are drawn from a collection which expands and contracts unpredictably with each of the thirty-six pairs of stanzas, resulting in harmonies which recall, repeat, reiterate - identical objects are never the same.

    Artists
Tags
New MusicWatch OnlineCollege