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SERGEY KHACHATRYAN ARNALDO COHEN BORODIN STRING QUARTET ALFREDO PERL

THE VIENNA STRING SOLOISTS CHILINGIRIAN QUARTET NATIONAL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA OF

ARMENIA ALEXANDER CHAUSHIAN LEOPOLD STRING TRIO JEREMY MENUHIN ALEXANDER

GHINDIN THE SIXTEEN LEONIDAS KAVAKOS GEORGE-EMMANUEL LAZARIDIS KOPELMAN

QUARTET RAZUMOVSKY ENSEMBLE DAVID JURITZ THE MUSICKE COMPANYE DANIELA LEHNER

ALESSIO BAX VIENNA PIANO TRIO LUIZ FERNANDO BENEDINI JAVIER PERIANES

LOUIS DEMETRIUS ALVANIS ENSEMBLE WIEN LONDON SINFONIETTA ANGELES BLANCAS

MARTINO TIRIMO PATRICIA ROSARIO STEPHAN LOGES AMATI QUARTET DANIIL SHTODA

LARISSA GERGIEVA BELCEA QUARTET PIOTR ANDERSZEWSKI GOULD PIANO TRIO

AVIV STRING QUARTET JONATHAN LEMALU PAAVALI JUMPPANEN FIBONACCI SEQUENCE

TRIO WANDERER SKAMPA STRING QUARTET PETERS BRUNS ROGLIT ISHAY YSAYE QUARTET

FLORILEGIUM MOSCOW VIRTUOSI & VLADIMIR SPIVAKOV GAEDE STRING TRIO NASH ENSEMBLE

CARMEN SERRANO ANDREW MANZE & THE ENGLISH CONCERT TRIO ONDINE EMMA KIRKBY &

THE LONDON BAROQUE ZEHETMAIR QUARTET HENNING KRAGGERUD ENSEMBLE MODERN

CHILINGIRIAN QUARTET STEVEN ISSERLIS VAHAN MARDIROSSIAN DMITRY SITKOVETSKY

NAOKI KITAYA MARINA POPLAVSKAYA SZYMANOWSKI QUARTET ASHLEY WASS PHILIPPE CASSARD

LEIPZIG STRING QUARTET CHRISTOPH POPPEN DIEMUT POPPEN DAVID GERINGAS

SHARON BEZALY ANGELICA CATHARIOU SOILE ISOKOSKI ALTENBERG TRIO WIEN YEVGENY

SUDBIN LENDVAI STRING TRIO ACADEMY OF ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS & JOSHUA BELL

MATAN PORAT ALINA IBRAGIMOVA GRIGORY SOKOLOV CHRISTOPH RICHTER

CHEN HALEVI RADOVAN VLATKOVIC ROMINA BASSO ACADEMY OF ANCIENT MUSIC & RICHARD

EGARR YAMANDU COSTA LE CONCERT SPIRITUEL & HERVÉ NIQUET VERONIQUE GENS

KUSS STRING QUARTET THE HILLIARD ENSEMBLE DAISHIN KASHIMOTO HEIICHIRO OHYAMA

VLADIMIR MENDELSSOHN GITTA-MARIA SJOBERG PETER SHEPPARD SKAERVED APPLE HILL

QUARTET EDWARD SIMON ENSEMBLE INTERCONTEMPORAIN GARRISON FEWELL

PHILHARMONIA QUARTET BERLIN DIONYSIS GRAMMENOS PHILIP DUKES NATALIA GUTMAN

KONSTANTIN LIFSHITZ RADOVAN VLATKOVIC CHARLES NEIDICH ZANDRA MCMASTER

JULIA FISCHER KREUTZER STRING QUARTET ROHAN DE SARAM BENJAMIN GROSVENOR

HAYK MELIKYAN EMMANUEL PAHUD BRUCE BARTH EXAUDI TIGRAN HAMASYAN

DISSONART ENSEMBLE CONCERTO SOAVE ALICE SARA OTT MAHAN ESFAHANI LARS HANNIBAL

MICHALA PETRI STREICHTRIO BERLIN BORIS BROVTSYN HESSEN YOUTH JAZZ BIG BAND

ORCHESTRA NAREK HAKHNAZARYAN ARIRANG WIND QUINTET QUARTETTO PROMETEO KAIROS

STRING QUARTET NIEUW ENSEMBLE ENSEMBLE ALEPH SERGEI BABAYAN EMMANUEL DESPAX

BRENTANO STRING QUARTET MUSIQUES NOUVELLES MARCELLOS CHRYSSICOPOYLOS

Pharos = 15

1998 – 2013 Transforming Society through Culture

I would like to welcome you all to the 5th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival. This year we also mark the 15th anniversary of the Pharos Arts Foundation whose dedication to cultural excellence in Cyprus continues. The Festival is the result of a deep commitment to present the art music of our time to audiences in Cyprus and to give Cypriot composers an opportunity to interact with their peers from all over the world.

Given this year’s unprecedented turmoil and the general depression that grips our society, some may question the need to present such an ‘esoteric’ Festival that addresses the interest of a tiny fraction of society. Why listen to unfamiliar, difficult music when there are so many weighty economic problems to deal with on a personal and collective level? Aren’t art and culture unnecessary distractions from the pressing, ‘real’ issues we are confronted with on a daily basis? It is precisely because we have become mesmerized with material values that we have forgotten the necessary equilibrium between the material and the spiritual. As Ghandi so succinctly pointed out corruption and violence towards ourselves and others stem from wealth without work, pleasure without conscious, knowledge with character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice and politics without principles.

Culture, the arts and music in particular are among the essential ways we can reconnect with the mystery and majesty of human life and understand what it means to be a human being. It is also, I believe, vital to listen to and understand the art music of our time. It is through sound and vibration that the universe comes into being and unfolds. I am sure that today, as in previous generations, many composers are exploring this ‘music of the spheres’ and attempting through their work to give us intimations of infinity, of the extraordinary correspondences that underlie the structure of the universe and our place in it. Let us lift our hearts and spirits, let us allow our imagination to sore and open itself up to essential realities. It is our birthright and destiny, so cunningly disguised by mundane and fruitless pursuits that lay waste our creative energies. Let us reimagine ourselves and our priorities so that these energies are spent wisely and our consciousness is focused on building a cultured and civilized society.

I am deeply grateful to Evis Sammoutis and all the participants of this year’s Festival for their extraordinary talent, creativity and commitment in time and energy, as well as to Yvonne Georgiadou without whose dedication and hard work nothing would materialize! I would also like to thank our friends and supporters, especially the Goethe Institute, Cyprus for their ongoing support of the Pharos Arts Foundation. I hope this week will be a source of inspiration and new discoveries for many.

Garo KeheyanFounder & PresidentPharos Arts Foundation

Foreword by the President of The Pharos Arts Foundation

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Matthew 16:26

We all witnessed the impact of the global financial tsunami as it reached our own shores, sweeping ferociously the backbone of our fragile economy and shattering livelihoods and dreams along the way. This has not only been a deep financial crisis but a struggle to retain pride and dignity whilst families strive to provide a better future for loved ones. We are in many ways witnessing the results of societies investing in material wealth instead of cultural wealth, of idolizing financial profit over a richness of spirit.

Instead of aiming to enrich our lives and souls with the things that matter, we filled our lives with material objects and with that, lost our humanity. The Prophet Muhammad once said, “Richness is not having many possessions; true richness is the richness of the soul”. It is there that we first went bankrupt.

Last year’s festival was put together amidst significant difficulties. This year’s had been nothing short of miraculous. The situation was so dire that all plans for the festival came to a halt. Artists were informed that we did not know if we could carry on. They responded bravely and with determination and put their own time and efforts to help us save the festival. Lori Freedman and Sharon Kanach, two of Cyprus’ most precious friends and supporters, worked tirelessly with me to make ensemble Transmission’s visit possible. The musicians of the ensemble responded similarly, and as part of this endeavour, we secured a generous grant from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec.

Hayk Melikyan responded immediately with generosity and enthusiasm to our request, as did the Neue Vocalsolisten of Stuttgart, the world’s premium vocal ensemble for new music. Thanks to their understanding and good will and the tireless efforts and hard work of Christine Fischer, one of the most genuine and generous promoters of new music that I know, a concert with this iconic group also became a reality. Funding from the German Arts Foundation and equally generous support from the Goethe Institute Cyprus, thanks to the efforts of another true supporter for arts, Mr Bjorn Luley, meant that one of the most important artistic highlights of our festival was achieved amidst the harshest of circumstances. At a time when Cypriots felt deserted once again by the international community, such gestures proved the exact opposite; that we are not alone and that art brings people together in unimaginable ways and creates the foundations for a more healthy society.

This outpouring of support and solidarity, for which I am very grateful, still would not have secured the festival if it were not for Garo Keheyan’s generosity and vision! In such hard circumstances, he once again demonstrated his commitment to the mission of bringing art of the highest level to all Cypriots. He and Yvonne Georgiadou have kept Pharos’ flame alive and with that, the promise for a better future.

At the heart of every festival’s identity are, of course, the composers, whom I would also like to thank. Some of them have travelled long distances and crossed oceans to be here in Cyprus to present their work. A highly successful international call for works resulted in over 40 submissions of new works from across the globe. We are presenting the world premieres of two of these in Cyprus in the presence of the composers. I would also like to thank Thomas Simaku, who is very much involved in this year’s festival with two performances, a new work and the direction of the composers’ workshops.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank you, our audience, for supporting our endeavour for yet another year. My message for this year, therefore, is one of optimism, gratitude and determination. Cyprus has had more difficult times and survived; art music, which is facing serious threat in several countries as a result of unprecedented cuts, will survive too because the pursuit of beauty and spiritualty is inherent in all of us.

Evis Sammoutis Artistic Director of the 5th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival

Foreword by the Artistic Director of the 5th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival

5TH INTERNATIONAL PHAROS CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FESTIVAL29 September – 6 October 2013 / 8.30pmThe Shoe Factory, NicosiaCyprusArtistic Director: Evis Sammoutis

Sunday 29 September / 5:00pm / Free AdmissionMaster-class with HAYK MELIKYAN

Monday 30 September / 8:30pm / Ticket: €10Piano Recital with HAYK MELIKYAN

Programme:

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)Klavierstück IX, No.4 (1960)

Henry Cowell (1897-1965)“The Tides of Manaunaun”, prelude for piano (from The Building of Bamba), HC 219/1 (1917)“The Snows of Fuji-Yama”, HC 395 (1924)

Artur Akshelyan (b. 1984)Asana (2012) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Philippe Fénelon (b. 1952): Melody of Spring 1947 (1984) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Henryk Górecki (1933-2010): Sonata for Piano No.1, Op.6 (1956/90) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Interval

Michael Jarell (b. 1958)Stille (2006) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Morton Feldman (1926-1987)Piano Piece to Philip Guston (1963) CYPRUS PREMIERE

György Kurtág (b. 1926)Les Adieux (1992) CYPRUS PREMIERE“...feuilles mortes...” (2004) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Thomas Simaku (b. 1958): Hommage à Kurtág (2011) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)Sonata for Piano in E-flat minor, Op.26 (1946)

Tuesday 1 October / 7:30pm / Free AdmissionLecture by SHARON KANACH Topoi: places and spaces of making and perceiving music

Tuesday 1 October / 9:30pm / Free AdmissionElectronic Music Performance: EYESOUND 2010

Tuesday 1 October / 10:00pm / Free AdmissionFilm Screening: KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN – HELICOPTER STRING QUARTET (2011)

Wednesday 2 & Thursday 3 October/ 10:00am - 1.00pm / Free AdmissionOpen Rehearsals: ENSEMBLE TRANSMISSION

Mobile phones must be switched off during performance. Flash photography and unauthorized recording prohibitedMembers of the audience are kindly requested to ensure all electronic devices are switched off and to stifle coughing as much as possible

Programme Subject to Change

Wednesday 2 October / 8:30pm / Ticket: €10Concert with the ENSEMBLE TRANSMISSION

Programme:

Matteo Giuliani (b. 1984)Primes for flute, clarinet, violin, cello & piano (2013) WORLD PREMIEREAnthony Green (b. 1984)Ohkyanoos for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano & percussion (2013) WORLD PREMIERE

George Christofi (b. 1983)‘’...quasi una Risonanza ‘’ for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion & piano (2013) WORLD PREMIERE

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)Plektó for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion & piano (1993)

Ana Sokolovic (b. 1968)Portrait parle for violin, cello and piano (2006) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Thursday 3 October / 8:30pm / Ticket: €10Concert with the ENSEMBLE TRANSMISSION

Programme:

Jimmie Leblanc (b. 1977)Infrared for flute, clarinet, violin, cello & percussion (2013) WORLD PREMIERE

Lori Freedman (b. 1958)Reimsix for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion & piano (2011) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Luca Francesconi (b. 1956)Encore Da Capo* for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion & piano (1985) CYPRUS PREMIERE *Arrangement for Ensemble Transmission by R. Grimaldi (2012)

Interval

Franco Donatoni (b. 1927)Arpège for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion & piano (1986) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Thomas Simaku (b. 1958)Solar for clarinet, violin & piano (2013) WORLD PREMIERE



Friday 4 October / 7:30pm / Free AdmissionLecture by THOMAS SIMAKUSoliloquy Cycle – Sweet and/or Sour?

Friday 4 October / 9:30pm / Free AdmissionFilm Screening: JOHN CAGE – JOURNEYS IN SOUND (2012)

Saturday 5 October / 7:30pm / Free AdmissionLecture by NOURITZA MATOSSIAN Recollections on the Cyprus Music Workshop 1973

Saturday 5 October / 9:30pm / Free AdmissionDance Performance by ARIANNA ECONOMOUJohn Cage’s Sixteen Dances

Sunday 6 October / 10:30am / Free AdmissionLecture by NEUE VOCALSOLISTEN Contemporary Vocal Techniques as used in Seminal Works of the 20th Century

Sunday 6 October / 8:30pm / Ticket: €10Concert with the NEUE VOCALSOLISTEN

Programme:

Lucia Ronchetti (b. 1963)Blumenstudien for 5 voices (2012/13) CYPRUS PREMIERE

José-María Sánchez-Verdú (b. 1968)Scriptvra Antiqva for 5 voices (2010/12) CYPRUS PREMIERE Andreas Dohmen (b. 1962)infra for 5 voices (2008) CYPRUS PREMIERE Carola Bauckholt (b. 1959)Stroh for 4 voices (2012) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Luciano Berio (1925-2003)A-Ronne for 5 voices (1974) CYPRUS PREMIERE

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SUNDAY 29 SEPTEMBER / 5:00PM / FREE ADMISSION

Master-class with HAYK MELIKYAN With the active participation of Cypriot young pianists Maria Avraam and Cleo Papadia. The master-class is open to the public.

PROGRAMME:

Maria Avraam: Debussy’s Claire de Lune Cleo Papadia: Skalkottas’ 15 Little Variations

MONDAY 30 SEPTEMBER / 8:30PM / TICKET: €10

Piano Recital with HAYK MELIKYAN

PROGRAMME:



Artur Akshelyan (b. 1984)

Asana (2012) CYPRUS PREMIERE Philippe Fénelon (b. 1952): Melody of Spring 1947 (1984) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Henryk Górecki (1933-2010): Sonata for Piano No.1, Op.6 (1956/90) CYPRUS PREMIERE Interval

Michael Jarell (b. 1958)Stille (2006) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Morton Feldman (1926-1987)Piano Piece to Philip Guston (1963) CYPRUS PREMIERE György Kurtág (b. 1926)Les Adieux (1992) CYPRUS PREMIERE“...feuilles mortes...” (2004) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Thomas Simaku (b. 1958): Hommage à Kurtág (2011) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)Sonata for Piano in E-flat minor, Op.26 (1946)

HAYK MELIKYAN / PIANO

“I am very grateful to Hayk Melikyan that he took the risk of creating that piece...” György Kurtág

Hayk Melikyan is recognized internationally as one of the most versatile and imaginative performers of contemporary music, and among today’s most engaging virtuoso pianists by classical music audiences and critics alike. His international concert début took place at the “Concerto di Concerti” International Festival of the 20th Century Music in Rome in 2000. He leads an active concert life, playing throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas.

After having won the Second Prize in the International Piano Competition of the 20th Century and Contemporary Music “Premio Valentino Bucchi” in Rome in 2000 he included the contemporary music as the leading part of his concert programmes. He is a laureate of many other competitions, such as “Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music” (Buffalo, USA, 2012), the “Samson Francois” and “André Boucourechliev” Prizes at the Orléans International Piano Competition (France, 2008, 2012), First Prize at Lazar Saryan Composers Competition (Yerevan, Armenia, 2008), and Special Prize at “Ibla Grand Prize” Piano Competition (Ragusa, Italy, 1999). Hayk Melikyan was awarded a Gold Medal by Moscow Composers Union for his contribution and promotion of the World Contemporary Music in 2012. In 2013, Hayk Melikyan was awarded the Title of an Honorary Artist of the Republic of Armenia.

He is the first performer of numerous works by many composers of our time and dozens of pieces were specially composed for him. This activity led Melikyan to the idea of initiating, in 2009, the Concert Series “1900+” consisting of 20th Century and Contemporary World Piano Music. Several solo albums by Hayk Melikyan have been released since 2007, targeting the 20th Century and Contemporary Music. His piano transcriptions, concert paraphrases and arrangements are among the favorite ones in the repertoires of many pianists worldwide. Hayk Melikyan has earned a reputation as one of the most creative improvisators by world audience, which adds an unusual value to his recitals.

Piano Recital with Hayk Melikyan 30 September 2013Programme Notes:


Though Stockhausen has among his catalogue several of the most famous avant-garde works of the twentieth century, his piano output is generally less well-known with the exception of this bizarrely successful work, which is a departure from the composer’s general artistic direction on certain, fundamental levels. Among the most serious considerations of this work is that it is not essentially derived from the Germanic musical tradition. Instead, it leans on ideas coming from the United States, American composers John Cage and Henry Cowell in particular.

With Webern killed in 1945 and Schoenberg cantankerously settled in California, the torch of German music was hoisted on a very young, demonstrably brilliant Stockhausen. His focus on Webern was perhaps emphasized by his equally smart colleague Pierre Boulez, and the two men went on to be among the most formidable composers of their day, both still active at the end of the millennium. Meanwhile in America, Cage was discovering chance operations and creating a distinctly New World aesthetic, bound up in a pioneer’s take on Eastern philosophy, searching for ways to make music without the will of the composer. It is among music history’s greatest ironies that Cage studied with Schoenberg, who taught Webern.

The influence of these ideas filtered back to Europe and is integral to Klavierstück IX. It comes in the form of an oversized score, framed by the publisher so that it will remain readable by the performer at the piano. On the paper are 19 fragments of distinct character. Some are chords; others are melodies of only a few notes while other sections are densely packed with material. The performer plays whichever fragment catches his or her eye. Before moving on to the next fragment, the previous one dictates how fast or slow, loud or quiet, the next section should be performed. Ordering – or not ordering – music in this way could already be found in some of Cowell’s work, which he called “elastic form.”

Stockhausen is more of a leader than a follower, so it seems strange to hear him shift from his position as the trailblazer from Germany to rounding out the ideas of a colonial colleague. What he adds to the equation of chance operations composition is a degree of musical grace that no other composer at the time (certainly no non-European) could have introduced. While the Americans displayed almost alarming inventiveness, the lilt and polish of the musical phrase still mainly resided in Europe. Anyone interested in contemporary music will immediately be struck by the significance of this

work, which is a culmination of cross-Atlantic influence. To finalize this bond, David Tudor, whose seminal interpretations of Cage’s work, had become another contribution to Stockhausen’s thinking of piano music. Many of his earlier keyboard works from the Klavierstück series had been revised with the composer’s admiration for Tudor’s ability to assimilate and accurately perform difficult, contemporary scores. The result is successful and deserves careful listening.

© John Keillor


Henry Cowell’s short piano piece The Tides of Manaunaun is usually referred to as a “Prelude” or “Introduction.” In prefacing his 1963 Folkways recording of this work, Cowell stated that it was “written as a prelude to an opera based on Irish mythology,” and that it represents Manaunaun, legendary Irish god of motion whose forces caused waves in bodies of water to flow.

In Cowell’s piece, Manaunaun’s “waves” are represented by large, sweeping tone clusters which are played using the left forearm. The folk-like melody of the piece is stated mostly in octaves in the right hand. While the pianistic means utilized in realizing Cowell’s program are simple, his results are undeniably effective, as The Tides of Manaunaun has an orchestral sweep and grandeur that has long impressed itself on hearers who are not necessarily fans of modern music. In his later years, Cowell played this avant-garde piece in the White House for American presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

Cowell frequently programmed The Tides of Manaunaun to open his own recitals and used it as a way “in” for listeners unaccustomed to his sound and style. He often identified it as his first venture into the realm of piano tone clusters and dated it variously 1911 or 1912. The original manuscript of the work no longer exists, and Cowell may have destroyed it to protect the secret of Manaunaun’s true, and somewhat later, origins. As he stipulates, The Tides of Manaunaun was conceived as a prelude to an opera based on Irish myth. This was The Building of Bamba (HC 219), best described as a “pageant” or “Mystery Play” written by John O. Varian, and presented at the headquarters of a Theosophist cult called The Temple of the People near San Luis Obispo, CA, in August 1917. Some of Cowell’s friends recalled Cowell playing this piece, or some variant of it, before 1917, but apparently the score did not take shape until the composition of The Building of Bamba.

© Uncle Dave Lewis

Philippe Fénelon (b. 1952): Melody of Spring 1947 (1984)CYPRUS PREMIERE

When discovering Raw Art, especially the paintings of Carlo (1916-1974), I wanted to compose a piece in his honour. Melody of Spring 1947 combines the memory of Ravel’s Une Barque sur l’ Océan (A Boat on the Ocean) with a song heard in an American film dating back to 1947, the same year that Carlo was committed to an institution from which he was never discharged. To fill the growing emptiness within, Carlo spent his time painting. He often listened to the radio where he could well have this spring melody, a partially-improvised, unreal and whimsical music, like that of separate worlds.

© Philippe Fénelon

Henryk Górecki (1933-2010): Sonata for Piano No.1, Op.6 (1956/90)CYPRUS PREMIERE

While Henryk Górecki has been relatively prolific as a composer, he is known for hanging on to any scores he is not completely satisfied with before he sends it off for performance or publication. His early Piano Sonata, written during the summer after his first year of composition studies with Boleslaw Szabelski in Katowice, is one such piece. In fact, the score sat in his drawer for close to thirty years. In 1984, Górecki pulled it out, worked on it some more, and permitted the first movement to be premiered at a festival in Denmark. Still not satisfied, the composer held on to the score until 1990, when he finally polished it up to his complete satisfaction. It speaks volumes about the underlying consistency of musical vision that it is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to tell the difference between passages written in his youth and others added much later.

The Sonata is cast in three movements, the two mostly fast outer ones framing an extraordinary central slow movement. This brief, intensely lyrical passage, marked grave pesante e corale is just twenty-four bars in length, and the music is shorn of absolutely all excess. The theme, heard on its own at first, is set off by carefully chosen harmonies and occasional accompanying phrases, often creating dissonant, bi-tonal sonorities that somehow seem to be just right.

The rest of the piece is in a similarly biting harmonic style, not so distant from the more aggressive piano music of Prokofiev or Bartók. The opening movement is the most substantial, by far, presenting an extended, slowly-unfolding theme over top of a driving accompaniment. The rhythmic propulsion is continued through a second theme before giving way to a central slow passage, in which the characteristic motive of the opening section is presented in conjunction with increasingly dense, rising chords. The jaunty second theme returns, followed by

Henry Cowell’s piano miniatures are well known, many of them bearing titles with reference to legends or mythical figures or places. These frequently utilize “extended techniques,” such as stroking the strings on the inside of the piano, as in The Aeolian Harp and The Banshee, or striking clusters of notes with the hand or forearm, as in The Tides of Manaunaun.

Snows of Fuji-Yama, one of his lesser-known works, was composed in this same spirit. As the composer explains, the piece takes its title from an old legend regarding the famous mountain, in which the snows that cap the peaks are found to be not snow at all, but rather lotus blossoms. Each blossom, the story goes, represents the soul of a different maiden.

This is a short piece, with a unique sound. Its vaguely exotic melody is rather straightforward, with simple figures in the lower ranges answered by more lyrical lines in the upper register. What gives the piece its character, however, is the clever way in which Cowell inflects each note in the melody with a shimmering tone cluster. These complex chords are executed simultaneously with the melody, and roughly follow its contours, but are delivered at a lower dynamic level so as to sound as an added resonance rather than a harmony or chord per se. The resulting timbre resembles some kind of imagined oriental bell or gong, with a clear fundamental pitch colored by a wide array of additional overtones.

© Jeremy Grimshaw

Artur Akshelyan (b. 1984)Asana (2012)CYPRUS PREMIERE

As suggested by Hayk Melikyan for the “1900 +” Concert Series of Contemporary Music, Asana was written during the spring of 2012. “Asana” is a term encountered in Yoga and firstly refers to the harmonic position of the body and concentrated mind. There are about 100 types of Asana and the latter has multi-layer perceptions. The piece is based on pulsation. The rhythm is the “central object” which gradually extends to wider harmonic layers creating the main element in the system. This is a process where the dynamic means of expression, figures and accents seem to oppose and merge into each other. The last segment rhythm is losing its original character, clarity, reaching minimal wave layers, inner trance.

the opening theme yet again. This arch form is rounded off at the end by a brief reference to the second theme, building up to a crashing close.

The characteristically extreme dynamic markings and relentless rhythmic drive prefigure (or reflect) many of Górecki’s later works, and this style is carried through into the closing movement. The music is brilliant, but grindingly aggressive, relieved, as in the first movement, by a brief, and again rather extraordinary, slow passage which is stunning in its purity and the rightness of every note and chord. A brief “perpetual mobile” sweeps the music to a furious climax, tempered by one more fleeting reference to the simple melody of the slow passage.

© James Harley

Interval

Michael Jarell (b. 1958)Stille (2006)CYPRUS PREMIERE

Michael Jarell was born in Geneva and studied composition at the Geneva Conservatory with Eric Gaudibert and at various workshops in the United States. He completed his training with Klaus Huber at the Freiburg Staatliche Hochschule für Musik im Brisgau. Starting in 1982, his works have received numerous prizes, including prix Acanthes, Beethovenpreis from the city of Bonn and Gaudeamus (1988). Between 1986 and 1988, he was Composer in Residence at the Cité des Arts in Paris and took part in the computer music course at Ircam. He resided at the Villa Médicis in Rome during 1988/89, and then joined the Istituto Svizzero di Roma. He served as Composer in Residence with the Lyon Orchestra, the Lucerne festival, and then was heralded by the Musica Nova Helsinki Festival, which dedicated the festival to him in 2000. In 2001, the Salzburg Festival commissioned a concerto for piano and orchestra entitled Abschied. The same year, he was named “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres”. On the occasion of Pierre Boulez’s eighty-fifth birthday in 2010, Michael Jarrell composed La Chambre aux échos for the Ensemble intercontemporain conducted by Susanna Mälkki. In 2012, his cello concerto Emergences (Nachlese VI) composed for Jean-Guihen Queyras, is premiered in Salt Lake City and Lyon. The same goes for Nachlese Vb - Liederzyklus for soprano and ensemble in Geneva and New-York City.

Stille was composed in 2006, for the Universal Edition companion Piano Project – New Pieces for Piano. The publication provides a solution to a crucial requirement that pianists and teachers understand to be essential: to familiarize piano students with music from their own time. The objective of editors Anne-Lise Gastaldi and

Valérie Haluk has been to create an introductory work, similar to Webern’s Children’s Piece and many of Bartók’s compositions, rather than the usual ‘didactic tome’. Having established that the available repertoire was quite inaccessible for those with only a few years of tuition, the project aimed at creating a collection of pieces that would allow young musicians a quick understanding of the styles used by the most important contemporary composers, including Georges Aperghis, Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Ivan Fedele, Cristóbal Halffter, György Kurtág, Luis de Pablo, Salvatore Sciarrino, and of course, Michael Jarrell.

Morton Feldman (1926-1987)Piano Piece to Philip Guston (1963)CYPRUS PREMIERE

Morton Feldman wrote Piano Piece to Philip Guston in 1963, one of only two solo piano works that he wrote in the 1960s. It is about four minutes long and demonstrates tendencies toward what would be his signature sound, which he found in the mid 1970s. Montreal-born Guston was an abstract expressionist painter working in New York, who was a friend and inspiration for the composer. Abstract expressionism was one of the most important components to Feldman’s personal aesthetic, which does not represent an abstract experience or feeling but demonstrates the act of pure artistic creation. What is left behind is a document of that aesthetic experience, which realizes itself as the artwork materializes during the act of making art. Guston and Feldman both discovered the artwork’s shape during the act of making something. They shared that creative process. In the late 1960s, Guston turned away from abstract expressionism in favour of a new kind of figuration that displeased Feldman greatly. The rift between the two men was not easily repaired, but the composer later spoke glowingly about the works of Guston that he could relate to, the ones that coincided with his own musical direction. In an important book about Feldman, he is quoted describing his first meeting Guston at a party being thrown by John Cage in 1951. Cage later pointed out to Feldman one of Guston’s works, and the younger composer’s appreciation was immediate.

Piano Piece to Philip Guston utilizes a very specific vocabulary of sound. There are no melodies or functional harmonies. Chords and single notes are sounded so that the differences of register among the notes are striking. The rhythmic aspect is not complex, involving a direct and steady progression with the occasional silence and fermata. When rhythm was further fleshed out to match the thorough working out of where the notes went and why in the following decade, Feldman’s voice was complete. In this work, the sound of a note, followed by a chord or visa versa is the critical thing. After a few moments of this, the different registers of the piano begin to take on specific, inexplicable significances, as

Béla Bartók Music Secondary School in Budapest. In 1960-80 he was répétiteur with soloists of the National Philhamonia. From 1967 he was assistant to Pál Kadosa at the Academy of Music, and the following year he was appointed professor of chamber music. He held this post until his retirement in 1986 and subsequently continued to teach at the Academy until 1993.

With increased freedom of movement in the 1990s he has worked increasingly outside Hungary, as composer in residence with the Berlin Philharmonic (1993-1994), with the Vienna Konzerthaus (1995), in the Netherlands (1996-98), in Berlin again (1998-99), and a Paris residency at the invitation of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cité de la Musique and the Festival d’Automne. Kurtág won the prestigious 2006 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his ‘...concertante...’.

Les Adieux is from the well-known series Jatekok (Games). Kurtág is another poet of the same type, his musical language remaining pure and intimate, regardless of the influence of the outer world. His contemporaries wrote music that was tied closely to politics and reactions to World War II, while Kurtág’s music reflected his memories of friends. Les Adieux is a Hommage to Leoš Janáček, reflected in the title “Farewells in the Style of Janáĉek”. The composition has a symbolic meaning and contains the delicate and unique harmonies which are very typical of Kurtág.

“...feuilles mortes...” is a short piece dedicated to the French pianist Jean Sebastien Dureau. The work contains elements of Webern-style thinking and has 18 “Phrases” which consist of several sounds. These “Phrases” are separated by long fermatas. This is another symbolic piece reflecting the composer’s view on his old diary and the past.

Thomas Simaku (b. 1958): Hommage à Kurtág (2011)CYPRUS PREMIERE

Hommage à Kurtág is all but centred around a two-note chord (G & A) taken from Kurtág’s name. The relationship between these two pitches and the rest of the chromatic spectrum is such that both G and A have their own specific location (always a major ninth apart) firmly rooted in the middle register – a position they will not yield throughout the piece – whilst the rest of the notes freely orbit above, below and between them (there is no row.)

Not only do these two pitches serve as sonic pillars, holding the architectural design together, but they seem to possess a gravitational power which gradually ‘engulfs’ the whole texture. Ubiquitously present, separately or together, they become part of a wealth of harmonic formations of various intensities, opening up in both directions and often reaching the extreme registers. In

do the chords. When notes have been heard in the same register a few times, their recurrence brings about an “ah, there it is” sensation. Listeners who are unfamiliar with this kind of music (there is not very much of it) will quickly find themselves forgetting that they do not know what this music is supposed to mean, and enjoy the sense of sharing the artistic process. By coming to terms with the process, listeners will have already found a foothold to the musical world being presented to them.

For this work, those who are familiar with Guston’s painting from the 1950s and the early 1960s can listen for the manner in which the painter successfully conveys the searching manner of each brush stroke. During this period, Guston would paint by staring at the canvas until he was compelled to apply paint somewhere, and build out from such an opening, following the tensions that generated themselves as the additive process continued. There is no sense of deliberate form; the greater shape of the work was achieved by abandoning the work where there is nothing more to do. This atmosphere of creation is conveyed in Piano Piece, as is the air of inevitability that Feldman admired so much in Guston’s work. For those who regard these approaches as remote to their own sensibilities, Piano Piece is a fine point of departure.

© John Keillor

György Kurtág (b. 1926)Les Adieux (1992)“...feuilles mortes...” (2004)CYPRUS PREMIERES

By the time the Hungarian composer György Kurtág was born in Lugos in 1926, the town was called Lugoj, and had, due to the peace treaty of Versailles, been ceded to Romania. Kurtág grew up in a multi-ethnic environment. It was as natural for him as for his friend György Ligeti, born in 1923 in Tarnaveni not far from Lugos, to speak three languages on a daily basis: Hungarian, Romanian and German.

Kurtág met Ligeti at the entrance examination at the Budapest Academy of Music in 1946 for the first time. They were to form a life-long friendship. Some professors of the Academy gave Kurtág important impulses – such as Ferenc Farkas, who was also Ligeti’s teacher, as well as Leó Weiner, Lajos Bárdos, Pál Járdányi and others. The next important encounter in Kurtág’s life occurred in Paris where he attended courses by Messiaen and Milhaud in 1957 and 1958. Most important of all, however, were the sessions with the psychologist Marianne Stein who specialised in artists. She tided him over a crisis which had paralysed his creativity for years. Kurtág says the meeting with Marianne Stein divided his life in two – she gave him a new lease of life, so to speak.

In 1958-63 Kurtág worked as a répétiteur with the

short, they resonate throughout the piece, as an echo or otherwise.

© Thomas Simaku

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)Sonata for Piano in E-flat minor, Op.26 (1946)Allegro energicoAllegro vivaceAdagioFugue

Barber’s Piano Sonata was commissioned in 1947 by Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers to mark the 25th anniversary of the League of Composers, an organisation that had been set up to foster standards and promote new music by American composers.

Despite making a quick start on it, Barber then took more than two years to complete the piece, the premiere finally being given on 23 January 1950 by none other than Vladimir Horowitz, who claimed that the sonata was “the first truly great native work in the form”. Such an endorsement counted for much and it rapidly became established in the repertoire, its ferocious difficulties making it popular not only in the concert hall but on the competition circuit too.

The influential American critic Olin Downes summed things up in the New York Times, “We consider it the first sonata really to come of age by an American composer of this period. It has intense feeling as well as constructive power and intellectual maturity. It is stated naturally and convincingly in the language of modern music.” And though it would be natural to assume that its fearsome demands were written for Horowitz, in fact Barber maintained that he had no specific pianist in mind when composing it. Displaying Barber’s lyrical gifts and calling for extreme pianistic dexterity, the work’s energy comes from its driving counterpoint and the extreme contrasts of tempos: there is nothing moderate about this piece.

TUESDAY 1 OCTOBER / 7:30PM / FREE ADMISSION

Lecture by SHARON KANACH Topoi: places and spaces of making and perceiving music

Every musician or ensemble, before performing in a given space, has a “sound check” to test the hall, the balance, the ambiance of the venue. The information thus collected informs the manner in which a given programme will be played; not what will be played (in the case of written music – improvisation being another question –) but rather how it will be played. During this presentation we will attempt to shift this process to the listener by demonstrating that what someone hears is affected by how it is heard. Listener immersion, since the 1960s, is increasingly a part of new music’s paradigm. Through an overview of historic experiences and literature exploring spatialization and immersion, heavily relying on Iannis Xenakis’s pioneering “polytopes,” The Shoe Factory becomes a temporary laboratory to actively explore such considerations.

The Lecture is in English. Duration approximately 90 minutes.

SHARON KANACH

Sharon Kanach is an American musician who has been based in France for the past thirty-some years. After graduating from Bennington College as a double major in music (composition) and literature (linguistics) she went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. Quickly however, her path crossed that of Iannis Xenakis, under whom she worked during her graduate studies at the Université de Paris I. Subsequently, the two collaborated closely for the last twenty years of Xenakis’s life, especially, but not exclusively, on his writings.

Their first collaboration was published in 1985 by Pendragon Press (NY): her translation of the defense of Xenakis’s Doctorat d’ Etat: Arts/Sciences: Alloys. Then, they collaborated on the revised and augmented edition of his seminal Formalized Music (Pendragon, 1992, originally published in English by Indiana University Press in 1971). Soon after that, they began what ended up being an over ten-year collaborative project, and Xenakis’s last one, as co-authors of the publication in French of Musique de l’architecture (Éditions Parenthèses, Marseille, 2006), also published in Spanish (Akal Editores, 2009), forthcoming in Chinese (HUST Editions) and in a distinct version in English, Music and Architecture, by Pendragon Press (2008).

Kanach was also the musical assistant of the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) during the last ten years of his life. To mark the 100th birthday of this composer, Kanach set out to create a critical edition of Scelsi’s complete writings, published in French by Actes Sud: Les anges sont ailleurs… (2006) – compiling his writings on music and art, L’ Homme du son (2007) – his collected poems, and Il Sogno 101 (2009) – his autobiography.

Kanach’s own scholarly articles are regularly published by international peer publications, such as Perspectives of New Music in the USA and in various international Proceedings of symposia where she is a regular keynote speaker on Xenakis, Scelsi and trans-disciplinary studies in general.

As an independent artistic director/producer/new music consultant, Kanach regularly collaborates with Mode Records (USA), Radio-France (Paris, France), WDR (Cologne, Germany), and various new music festivals in Europe and North America. Since June 2007, Kanach is the acting artistic director and co-vice-president of the newly reestablished Centre Iannis Xenakis (= CIX, formerly CCMIX and Ateliers UPIC, originally created by Xenakis in 1985 in Paris), now based at the Université de Rouen.

TUESDAY 1 OCTOBER / / 9:30PM / FREE ADMISSIONElectronic Music Performance: EYESOUND 2010

EyeSound is an electronic musical instrument. It uses the Kinect controller for the Xbox as developed by Microsoft with software adapted and developed by Rolf Gehlhaar and Vahakn Matossian. The Kinect employs computer vision in both the visual and infrared spectrum to locate persons within a 3-dimensional visual field. When appropriately decoded, this information can be used to trigger and control the voices of a synthesiser/sampler such as AbletonLive.

In the instance of EyeSound, the 3-dimensional visual field is mapped onto many different ‘voices’ of a sampler that players can trigger and control with their hands simply by placing and moving them in the visual field of the Kinect. This simple way of interacting with the instrument makes it possible for people with little physical skill to play an expressive, powerful musical instrument. A duet with EyeSound has been performed several times by Rolf Gehlhaar and Vahakn Matossian, most notably as a part of their performance and presentation for TEDx at Sussex Uiversity and at Music in a Field, Glastonbury, 2012.

The duet with Eyesound at The Shoe Factory is performed by Nouritza and Vahakn Matossian. Duration approximately 20 minutes.

VAHAKN MATOSSIAN

Vahakn Matossian is a Product Designer and Musician and he runs a design studio in London. He is working alongside the British Para Orchestra in developing new musical instruments for the physically disabled, with his father Rolf Gehlhaar, and has performed at TEDx Sussex and Brussels.

Vahakn is a solo electronic composer (HARKY) and DJ and is a member of the Gentle Mystics, a ten strong psychedelic folk band, in which he plays synthesiser, percussion and hailing from his Cypriot roots, bouzouki. They play at most UK festivals, including Glastonbury, and regularly tour France. Vahakn Matossian holds a Masters degree from the Royal College of Art and a Bachelor degree from the University of Brighton. For more information: www.vahakn.co.uk

TUESDAY 1 OCTOBER / 10:00PM / FREE ADMISSIONFilm Screening: KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN – HELICOPTER STRING QUARTET (2011)

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Helicopter-Streichquartett is one of the most controversial and talked about works of art in the recent years. Composed for the Arditti Quartet and premiered at the 1995 Holland Festival, it involves the four members of a string quartet playing in four different helicopters flying through the air. The music the quartet plays is then sent to a central space and mixed at a sound board.

In his film Helicopter String Quartet, Frank Scheffer documents the complex preparations in the month leading up to the premiere of this work, as well as eliciting insights from the composer regarding how he conceived and executed it. Stockhausen tells Scheffer, for example, that the idea for the work came to him in a dream he had for musicians being able to fly. He then produced a fascinatingly original score in which each instrument is written in a different color, and in which the four string lines frequently jump from one staff to the other in order to imitate birds flying in different formations.

Stockhausen also analyses the content of the work for Scheffer, in particular showing how the writing for the quartet is meant to merge with the sonic characteristics of the helicopters. Scheffer goes behind the scenes, and stage by stage, shows the enormous production needed to realize Helicopter – Streichquartett. Runtime: 77 minutes

2 & 3 OCTOBER / 10:00AM - 1.00PM / FREE ADMISSION

Open Rehearsals: ENSEMBLE TRANSMISSION The Ensemble Transmission rehearses the World Premieres with Thomas Simaku, Matteo Giuliani and Anthony Green (winners of the first “Call for Scores” of the Pharos Arts Foundation) and George Christofi. The Rehearsals are open to the public and followed by an open dialogue.

WEDNESDAY 2 OCTOBER / 8:30PM / TICKET: €10

Concert with the ENSEMBLE TRANSMISSION

PROGRAMME:

Matteo Giuliani (b. 1984)Primes for flute, clarinet, violin, cello & piano (2013) WORLD PREMIERE

Anthony Green (b. 1984)Ohkyanoos for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano & percussion (2013) WORLD PREMIERE




THURSDAY 3 OCTOBER / 8:30PM / TICKET: €10

Concert with the ENSEMBLE TRANSMISSION

PROGRAMME:



Luca Francesconi (b. 1956)Encore Da Capo* for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion & piano (1985) CYPRUS PREMIERE *Arrangement for Ensemble Transmission by R. Grimaldi (2012)

Interval

Franco Donatoni (b. 1927) Arpège for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion & piano (1986) CYPRUS PREMIERE


ENSEMBLE TRANSMISSIONGuy Pelletier / fluteLori Freedman / clarinetAlain Giguère / violinJulie Trudeau / celloJulien Grégoire / percussionBrigitte Poulin / piano

The Ensemble Transmission is a collective of six musicians who are independent artists, thinkers and producers. The Ensemble plays mostly modern and contemporary music from solo to sextet and their concert repertoire is based entirely on what the members want to play. Each musician is driven by an innate sense of musical curiosity. They are all fully dedicated to and immersed in the creation, diffusion and advancement of contemporary music and its related practices. Transmission is also active in initiating projects that straddle the realms of composition and improvisation, locating themselves in a zone of exploration, where performance practice creates its own music. Transmission radiates a fresh and essential energy, offering an artistic refuge to its members that allows for the constant research and practice of new performance works. The dedication of these musicians generates a contagious force, enabling them to present projects that would otherwise be impossible to realize.

The ensemble received performance invitations from the La Chapelle Theater, the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ), the Montréal Nouvelle Musique (MNM) Festival, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal), the SoundaXis Festival (Toronto), the International Chamber Music Festival (Ottawa), and the Xenakis Projects of the Americas (New York). In July 2011, with financial support from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Ensemble Transmission gave its European début. The Ensemble was invited to be the ensemble-in-residence at the international festival Les Nouvelles Flâneries de Reims. The Transmission Ensemble will soon release two CD recording projects - TRANSMISSION (works by Xenakis, Donatoni, Murail, Harvey, Leroux, Essl) and PORTRAIT INTIME (works by Ana Sokolovic).

Transmission gives special thanks to the Conseil des arts et des letter du Québec, for their patience and understanding during the Cyprus Crisis of 2013.

Ensemble Transmission’s Concerts and community activities, as part of the 5th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival, are supported by the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec

Get to know us.Canada Council for the Arts Brand Guidelines

Transmission Ensemble 2 October 2013Programme Notes:

Matteo Giuliani (b. 1984)Primes for flute, clarinet, violin, cello & piano (2013) WORLD PREMIERE

Following the completion of first level piano studies and high school (with maximum grade), Matteo Giuliani studied music composition with Professors Chiara Benati and Cristina Landuzzi at the “G. B. Martini” Conservatory of Bologna, where he also received a Masters in Choral Music and Choral Direction. Then he undertook a parallel course in computer science engineering at the Bologna University Bologna and he is now enrolled at the “G. Verdi” Conservatory of Milan in the composition class under Maestro Alessandro Solbiati. He attended master-classes with Heinz Holliger and Giacomo Manzoni.

Giuliani has won several composition contests under the adjudication of well-known composers and musicians such as Marcello Abbado, Ivan Fedele, Johannes Schoelhorn, Alfonso Alberti, Sandro Gorli and Frédéric Durieux. His music has been performed in important seasons (Rondo’ – Divertimento Ensemble, GAMO – Florence, Teatro Comunale – Bologna, GAM – Gallery of Modern Art, Milan) and by notable artists, including Maria Grazia Bellocchio, Laura Catrani, Francesco Gesualdi, Dario Savron. In 2010, Pèn Graté, his choral work based on a folk song he rediscovered, won the composition competition sponsored by the Choral Project of San Jose (California, U.S.A.), directed by Daniel Hughes. In 2012 he won “Le note ritrovate” Composition Contest (Jury’s President: Frédéric Durieux – composition professor in Paris Conservatory) and was selected as a finalist in the AFAM-Divertimento Ensemble Composition Contest (jury, among the others: Gervasoni, Gardella). In 2013 he won the following international contests: Pontino Festival (new commission for Pontino Festival 2014) besides the 3rd place at the “Egidio Carella” Contest (first place not assigned – jury: Oscar Van Dillen, Sonia Bo, Andrea Portera, Andrea Talmelli) and the unique Honorable Mention (2nd place out of 132 applications) at the Left Coast Ensemble Composition Contest (San Francisco, CA, USA). One of his new works will be premiered next Fall at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Matteo Giuliani conducts two groups in the Bologna area: the Scaricalasino Choir and the Ravel Ensemble (Borgonuovo), he also founded.

Of his work, Primes, which has been selected in the First “Call for Works” of the International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival, Giuliani writes:

“Prime numbers distribution is one of the most interesting math problems still unsolved. The existence of a unifying generative formula for prime numbers has

not been proved yet, but their succession – even if so irregular – seems all but accidental. This idea, stimulated by a thought about the well-known relationship between that distribution and the Riemann Zeta function, is the basis of the formal construction of the work and is expressed by a unifying melodic sequence, Primes’ real deep structure.”

Anthony Green (b. 1984)Ohkyanoos for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano & percussion (2013) WORLD PREMIERE

Composer and pianist Anthony Green (USA, 1984) has recently explored relinquishing control over specific compositional elements to enhance the development and saturation of others. Throughout his varied compositional career, he has received numerous commissions, readings, and performances by ALEA III (USA), Ossia New Music Ensemble (USA), Grupo Instrumental Siglo XX (Spain), Décadanse (France), Lukasz Klusek (contrabass) and Art-Oliver Simon (piano, Germany), and Alarm Will Sound (USA), among others. He has participated in numerous festivals, both as a composer and a pianist.

Anthony Green has received grants for composing, lecturing, and giving master-classes. His works with electronics have been diffused in festivals and concerts in the United States, Spain, and Venezuela. He has also participated in master-classes with Michael Finnissy, Jonathan Harvey, and Walter Zimmermann. He was the first recipient of the ATLAS Fellowship, which funded his first multimedia work based on the Book of Job.

Of his work, Ohkyanoos, which has been selected in the First “Call for Works” of the International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival, Anthony Green writes:

“I was born and raised on the east coast of the United States, and have always loved listening to and watching the ebb and flow of the ocean’s waves. The sudden, impromptu rush, followed by moments of calm whose duration cannot be predicted - this random pattern of give and take pervades much of my composition aesthetic, and is most clear in this work. Ohkyanoos (or סּונָיְקֹוא; “ocean” in Hebrew) is primarily a textural exploration of the ebb and flow of gestures, colours, and sonic environments. Its pitch material is derived from a controlled manipulation of the main melody from the song Oceania by Björk. This melodic material “floats to the surface” in the meditative calm that closes the work.”

Marnay Art Centre in France. He is also a finalist for the Heidi Cupp Prize with his work Dancing Shadows that will take place in London this forthcoming November.

Since 2011, George has been teaching at the Department of Arts of the European University Cyprus and last year was appointed as Classical Guitar Instructor at Larnaca’s Music Lyceum. For more information: www.georgechristofi.com

“No matter how diversified the term resonance is in its scientific meaning, as an everyday word it immediately connects to concepts related to sound and image. It was the painter Claude Monet of the French impressionism who once stated: ‘For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.’ Nevertheless, it was not only the impressionists that applied the captured resonance of their surroundings to the creative process but, I believe this has been a universal approach among artists.

The title of my piece, …quasi una Risonanza, is an implicit reference to the subtitle of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.14, Op. 27: Quasi una fantasia. This famous piece publicly known as the moonlight sonata provided the ‘resonating object’ for the material used in my work. It was not my intention to re-orchestrate the Sonata directly or even use ‘thematic material’ drawn from it but to capture its overall resonance. Hence, the influence from Beethoven is not directly audible; instead, it resonates through the harmonic and gestural elements as appear in my piece. Therefore, among the processes used during the making of the piece is the studio technique of wave stretching: slowing down the speed of the Moonlight Sonata using the computer I could delve into its harmony noticing that new notes, mainly overtones, were coming to surface. Also, …quasi una Risonanza is coloured with sounds of extended, non-conventional instrumental techniques such as, playing inside the piano, multiphonics, air tones etc. Finally, to highlight the harmonic link between the Moonlight Sonata and my piece I used chords that derived from a C sharp (Sonata’s key is C sharp minor) natural spectrum.”

© George Christofi


Plektó means “braids,” a term that refers to the contrapuntal weaving of strands into a whole. Xenakis treats the notion of strand in an abstract and deeply musical way, applying it to shifting elements throughout the piece. One braid is the juxtaposition of linear, melodic material with more chordal, percussive elements. The piano provides the balance to the sustaining instruments, and Xenakis enlists additional percussion to add bulk to the piano’s strand. At other times, the woodwinds are


Among the main constructive elements of Christofi’s music is the physical transformation of sound. On one, explicit level, this metamorphosis is mainly based on the direct timbral alteration of the sound achieved by the use of extended instrumental techniques; on another, implicit level, on the manipulation of sound’s spectrum through specific processing of the harmonic material. George’s music reached audiences in more than 15 countries worldwide and been broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Festivals which hosted his music include: ‘Clarinet baix i electronica’ by PHONOS-FUNDACIÓ MÚSICA CONTEMPORÀNIA (Spain), International Music Festival Heidelberger ‘Frühling 2007’ (Germany), ‘Attention Musiques Fraîches ! 2008’ Festival (Belgium), Pescara Fiera Festival 2008 (Italy), 2008 Seoul International Computer Music Festival (Korea), Nuova Musica a Treviso (Italy), The 3rd Pharos Contemporary Music Festival (Cyprus), ECO Sound (Belgium), Centro Culturale San Fedele - Electrobag on Tour (Italy), the 21st International Review of Composers (Serbia), LondonEar Contemporary Festival (U.K.) among others. Some of his commissioned works include Diplophonia for Mario Caroli (Published by ARS Publica Edizioni Musicali); Rondel, a setting by Ursula Vaughan Williams’ poems for the Soprano Sarah Leonard (Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust and the University of Hull sponsored the project); Tethys for the Trio IAMA; Reflets dans l’eau for the European Contemporary Orchestra, among others.

He holds a BMus (First Class Honours) from the University of Hull where he majored in Guitar Performance, Composition and Orchestration. He furthered his studies at the University of York where he obtained an MA (Distinction) and PhD in Composition under the supervision of Thomas Simaku. His studies were funded by the University of York MA Scholarship, the Vinson Award, The Sir Jack Lyons Research Grant and The A.G. Leventis Foundation Research Scholarship. During his U.K. residency had enjoyed a 6-year shortlisting by the London based artistic organisation Sound and Music (ex- SPNM: Society for the Promotion of New Music).

George had the opportunity to externally study with distinguished composers, such as Ferneyhough, Sciarrino, Hosokawa, Neuwith, Boesmans, Harvey among others, at various international artistic programmes where he was selected as a fellow in venues including: the Centre Acanthes (selected for three consecutive years in France and Belgium), Voix-Nouvelles Residency (Fondation Royaumont, Paris), Ircam Academy (Glasgow), Premio Niccolò Castiglioni (Centro Culturale San Fedele, Milano, Italy) and others.

Recently, he has been offered a place for a couple of artistic residency programmes at the Visby International Centre for Composers in Sweden and the Centre d’Art –

paired against the strings, while on occasion the flute and violin are set against the clarinet and cello. There are passages of chromatic origin while others come from fixed collections of pitches. There are passages for solo piano, and briefer ones for solo percussion, but in general the music proceeds rather continuously, inexorably.

Typical of Xenakis’ late works, the tempo is very slow, making it extraordinarily difficult for the performer to project the braids over such long time-spans. There is a passage toward the end of Plektó where each instrument enters in its own tempo, each one very slow, but each moving according to a precise rhythmic relationship to the others and to an ongoing, implied pulse. The melodic material is abstract like Bach’s late contrapuntal works), which often incorporate large leaps and irregular rhythms. But the continuous flow, together with the more rhythmically articulate material of the piano and percussion, provide the momentum that carries the work to its completion. Plektó is further evidence of Xenakis’ ability to mold traditional concepts into his own unique design.

© James Harley


Serbian-born composer Ana Sokolović, who has lived in Montreal for two decades, has been immersed in the arts all her life. Before taking up theatre and music, she studied classical ballet. She studied composition at university under Dusan Radić in Novi Sad and Zoran Erić in Belgrade, then completed a master’s degree under the supervision of José Evangelista at the Université de Montréal in the mid-1990s. Her work is suffused with her fascination for different forms of artistic expression. Both rich and playful, her compositions draw the listener into a vividly imagined world, often inspired by Balkan folk music and its asymmetrical festive rhythms. The winds of change brought by her work quickly vaulted her to a prominent position on the Quebec, Canadian and international contemporary music scenes. In the winter of 2012, she was recognized as a national treasure by Quebec’s Ministère de la Culture, des Communications et de la Condition féminine.

Over the years, Ana Sokolović has earned a steady stream of commissions and awards. Today, her repertoire includes orchestral, vocal, chamber, operatic and theatrical pieces. From 1995 to 1998, she was a three-time recipient of the SOCAN Foundation Award for Young Composers. In the 1999 edition of the CBC Young Composers Competition, she won the grand prize along with first prize in the chamber music category. In 2005, she won the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize presented by the Canada Council for the Arts, and in 2007 the

Conseil Québécois de la musique awarded her the Prix Opus for composer of the year. In 2008, she won the Jan V. Matejcek Award presented by SOCAN; in 2012, she was a repeat winner of the same award. In 2009, she won the prestigious National Arts Centre Award, which included commissions, residencies and teaching positions over a five-year period. In the summer of 2012, her opera Svadba-Wedding, commissioned and produced by the Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, received six nominations for the Dora Mavor Moore Awards and won for Outstanding New Musical/Opera. The opera then went on tour in Canada and Europe until 2013.

The Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) recently marked the 20th anniversary of Ana Sokolović’s arrival in Quebec with a celebration of her body of work. “For the scope, diversity and quality of her work; for the originality of her approach; for her energy, her reputation among the most prestigious institutions and her appeal to audiences of all ages,”* the society’s artistic committee unanimously decided to devote the third edition of its Série Hommage tribute performance series to her. The series, held over the 2011-12 season, attracted record participation as Canadian artists and organizations enthusiastically answered the call. More than 200 events were presented in her honour from coast to coast. Ana Sokolović teaches composition at the Université de Montréal.

Synoptic board of physionomical lines for use in the study of Portrait Parle:

This table, was intended for (or destined for) the French Police Department around 1900, and served to identify individuals. It is divided in twelve sections, each representing a facial feature. Each section has up to forty small photographs which illustrate in detail the different types of ears, noses, eyelids, chins etc.This table is only a poetic trigger. The material is based on clusters.

Ia FOREHEAD liquid with accentsIb HAIR unstableII NOSE danceIIIa LIP wavesIIIb MOUTH waves and peakIIIc CHIN murmur (mutterings) callIVa GENERAL HEAR OUTLINE (side profile) rocks monumental/heavyIVb GENERAL HEAR OUTLINE (frontal view) rocks figurinesV RIGHT EAR (border) mysteriousVI RIGHT EAR (ear lobe) mysteriousVII RIGHT EAR (antitragus) mysteriousVIII RIGHT EAR (general form) mysteriousIX EYEBROWS stormy (raging, hot-headed) and clingyXa EYELIDS small waves, workshopXb EYEBALL villainXc EYE-SOCKET towards tangled

Transmission Ensemble 3 October 2013Programme Notes:


Jimmie LeBlanc is a Canadian composer born in the Province of Quebec. He studied composition and musical analysis at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, and is currently completing a doctorate at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. Ensembles that have performed his music include Ensemble Contrechamps, Esprit Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini and Trio Fibonacci. He took part in Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s Forum 2008 in Lyon, where he was also in residence at Grame, the national centre for musical creation. In the last few years he was the recipient of the Lutoslawski Award 2008, and he won the 2009 Canada Arts Council Jules-Léger Prize for New Chamber Music, for his work L’Espace intérieur du monde. He is the author of Luigi Nono et les chemins de l’écoute (L’Harmattan, 2010), Denys Bouliane, Maître de jeu (Circuit : musiques contemporaine, PUM, 2007), and Xenakis’ Æsthetic Project: the Paradoxes of a Formalist Intuition (Xenakis Matters, Pendragon Press, 2012), for which he has been awarded the ‘Chercheur-étoile’ prize from Fonds Québécois de Recherche Société et Culture.

“Infrared is the second part of a diptych, the first part being Red Thread, for saxophone quartet. In the latter, a series of poetic images based on more or less imaginary shades of the colour red motivated the emergence of musical ideas either in clear, bold strokes that develop into musical gestures I call ‘performative figures’, or musical ideas that are inner and seamless in nature, closer to texture. Infrared offers a reinterpretation of these poetic snapshots and tries to grasp underlying aspects that are ‘invisible to the naked eye’ of these vibration waves that lie at the boundary of colour and heat, of these infrared rays that can only be captured using particular devices. Thus, the shade ‘red-oblivion’, in Red Thread, becomes Erosions in Infrared, and ‘liminal-red’ becomes Thresholds, etc. Infrared is also the title of a novel by Nancy Huston, in which a photographer captures her lovers using infrared, thus revealing some sort of thermal cartography of their life and body. The composition of this work has been made possible with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, and is warmly dedicated to the musicians of Ensemble Transmission.”

© Jimmie LeBlanc


Lori Freedman started her musical career as a clarinet player. Developing a particular affinity with the bass and contrabass voices of that reed family over the past 35 years she has made significant contribution to the repertoire for those bass instruments: she has premiered hundreds of orchestral, ensemble and solo works from composers who have been exploring the “lower” regions of the clarinet family. Direct collaboration with creative artists in other fields (dance, theatre and film) has lead Freedman to widespread activities in improvisation, evolving still further and naturally to include writing her own music. While carrying on a full performance schedule (more than 50 concerts a year) locally and internationally, plus making recordings and giving master classes, Freedman has also been receiving commissions to write music for an eclectic group of musicians: Arraymusic, Transmission Ensemble, Paramirabo Ensemble, Continuum Ensemble, Ensemble Supermusique, Upstream Orchestra, Queen Mab Trio, Crowbar Trio, Foresite Theatre, Cooke Productions and Autumn Leaf Productions. She has premiered her solo compositions internationally (Zagreb, Bucharest, Vienna, Budapest, Paris, Lyon, Reims, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, New York, Washington, Virginia, Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Winnipeg, Waterloo and Guelph) and received invitations from organizations such as the Gaudeamus Festival (Holland), The Loft (Germany), Radio France and Les Nouvelles Flâneries de Reims (France), Birmingham Theatre (UK), Rai Radio (Italy), SMCQ and Avatar (QC), the Music Gallery (Ontario), Western Front (BC) and The Stone (NYC).

“Reimsix was written in a state of total privilege ... Writing music for a group of musicians with whom I will also perform the music! And not for and with just any musicians: this is the group that I put together and chose to play with on a regular basis specifically because of their individual musical personalities. Reimsix began as a much larger piece that was sculpted and chiselled over a substantial workshop/rehearsal period, evolving into the piece you that will hear tonight. While writing I was interested in exploring very specific elements without defining the entire composition: jagged turnings and changings of sections; unplayed (invisible) lines; scattered opportunities to improvise, contrasting textural groupings in compound and insistent unison rhythms; tension in silences. The piece was premiered at the Festival musical des nouvelles Flâneries de Reims in 2011 by Ensemble Transmission. I have also arranged Reimsix in a sister version for quintet with no percussionist but whereby much of the percussion part is distributed among the 5 remaining players. The quintet was premiered in Winnipeg, Canada in March 2013.”

© Lori Freedman

Luca Francesconi (b. 1956)Encore Da Capo for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion & piano (1985) *Arrangement for Ensemble Transmission by R. Grimaldi (2012)CYPRUS PREMIERE

Luca Francesconi studied piano at the Milan and composition with Azio Corghi, Karlheinz Stockhausen (Rome), Luciano Berio (Tanglewood) and jazz (Boston). He was Berio’s assistant from 1981 to 1984. In 1990 he founded Milan Agon Acustica Informatica Musica, centre for music production and research in new technologies, which he directed until 2006. Francesconi has written more than 100 works for different ensembles ranging from solo to large orchestra, resulting in commissions from institutions such as IRCAM, ASKO, BBC Symphony, the Swedish Radio Orchestre and Choir, the Oslo Philharmonic, La Scala Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Radio France Philharmonic, Israel Philarmonic and Gewandhaus Leipzig. He has composed five radio operas for the RAI and six operas using multimedia technologies. In 2011, he was artistic director of the contemporary music programme at the Venice Biennale. For twenty-five years, Francesconi has taught in Italy and given master classes around the world. He is presently professor and department head of composition at the Haute École de musique de Malmö (Sweden).

“It is very important to find clear ideas, after all the complexity of the avant-garde, without giving up the fantastic power of everything in this century that just passed. It is important now, more and more, to use simple elements.

Encore / Da Capo aims to create the transformational mechanism of a single large arch through a process of greatest clarity. This should be as clear and understandable as in a painted gesture. Its transformation is, I should say, more physiological than actually becoming something: it has a centre and two mirrored branches. It is not a palindrome, but its motives seem to revolve around themselves. Da Capo begins as a pure energy state, almost physiological: pulsation, rhythm. This energy unravels and gradually evolves from the indefinite to the defined then moves further and further away, like a long slowing down of space and time. It is a labyrinth where the composer invites us to remember that repetition is just as much a “repetition”, the act of re-listening, as it is a celebration. Encore / Da Capo was composed for the ensemble Ictus and later arranged by Raphaël Grimaldi in 2012 for Ensemble Transmission.”

© Luca Francesconi

Interval

Franco Donatoni (b. 1927)Arpège for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion & piano (1986) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Born in Verona, Franco Donatoni started studying violin at the age of seven, and frequented the local Music Academy. Later he studied at the Milan Conservatory and Bologna Conservatory. He taught composition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Milan Conservatory, and several other Academies and summer courses such as Darmstädter Ferienkurse and Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Sienna. His compositions have been conducted by Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Salvatore Accardo, Alain Meunier and many others. At least three generations of composers studied with Donatoni. Among his Italian pupils were Matteo D’Amico, Roberto Carnevale, Giulio Castagnoli, Ivan Fedele, Sandro Gorli, Luigi Manfrin, Giorgio Magnanensi, Luca Mosca, Riccardo Piacentini, Fausto Romitelli, Riccardo Nova, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Alessandro Solbiati, Piero Niro, Giovanni Verrando, and among his foreign pupils Gilles Bellemare, Pascal Dusapin, Javier Jacinto, Magnus Lindberg, Pierre Kolp, Javier Torres Maldonado, Katia Tiutiunnik and Juan Trigos. One of Donatoni’s notable students is the Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Donatoni dedicated his final work, Esa (in Cauda V), to Salonen, after having dictated it to his assistants from his death bed, and including letters from Salonen’s first name as part of the musical material. Prior to the work’s world premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Salonen briefly discussed the piece from the stage: while at first he was too sad to conduct it, he ultimately found joy and affirmation in the piece, noting “my old teacher’s message to me, something like ‘Carry on, son, it will be OK.’” Donatoni died in Milan in 2000, after dictating Esa to his students.

In Arpège a motive of arpeggios first takes form in the vibraphone then picked up and transformed in the piano. Donatoni described this as the “comment to be ...”, which creates for the listener a maze of possibilities that can seem endless. All of these are generated by the simple object, the arpeggio, allowing evolutionary variants. Giving the work as an example, the composer says “…therefore an object does not develop but only changes, all while remaining the same.” and “Fragments that remain etched in the memory, fleeting snatches of Arpège vanish to be reborn and to create protagonists”. The work was commissioned by Philippe Albèra and l’ensemble Contrechamps to whom it is dedicated. It was premiered in Paris in March 1987.


Solar is based on Philip Larkin’s poem of the same title. Part of the High Windows volume (Faber & Faber 1974), Solar is one of Larkin’s well known poems which have been described as a ‘piquant mixture of lyricism and discontent’. This was ‘music to my ears’, and having previously composed two other works – Plenilunio and Raggio Lunare – which hover on the same ‘sonic orbit’, as it were, this particular poem immediately struck a chord with me: its astral, celestial, lunar, cosmological, stellar, planetary and universal associations (not to mention the energy here) gave further impetus to my curiosity on both musical and extra-musical levels. More specifically, poetic images inherent in each of the three Solar stanzas, such as ‘how still you stand’ ‘continuously exploding’ ‘there among lonely horizontals’, called for specific sound images within an overall static canvass of constantly proliferating sonorities.

Although in no way programmatic, the piece as a whole could be well described as a ‘wordless setting’ of Larkin’s poetic imagery, but the music here freely interprets these imageries by composing and re-composing them. The format of the poem has also had an impact on this ‘musical interpretation’, in that number three is an important one in the overall structure of both the poem and the music. As in Larkin’s Solar, which consists of three impeccably articulated stanzas, this piece of music is also composed in three main sections (notwithstanding the number of instruments) played without a break – a formal articulation that the composer hopes will be audibly clear to the listener. However, in Larkin’s poem the three stanzas are remarkably equal in length; this is not the case in the music (the deviation from this ‘sectional equality’ is primarily due, I suppose, to the temporal quality of music). On the other hand, the significance of number three is further ‘enhanced’ by the fact that in the music the third section on itself consists of three subsections, whilst the first two sections and the coda also make a threesome – thus lending the whole structure of the piece an isomorphic quality in which number three assumes a structural role on both macro and micro-levels.

© Thomas Simaku

Philip Larkin’s Solar

Suspended lion faceSpilling at the centreOf an unfurnished skyHow still you stand,And how unaidedSingle stalkless flowerYou pour unrecompensed.

The eye sees youSimplified by distanceInto an origin,Your petalled head of flamesContinuously exploding.Heat is the echo of yourGold.

Coined there amongLonely horizontalsYou exist openly.Our needs hourlyClimb and return like angels.Unclosing like a hand,You give for ever.

Κύκλος: ΠολιτισμόςΟ Πολιτισμός είναι το χθες και το σήμερα.

Τον ενισχύουμε. Ενθαρρύνοντας τη δημιουργία

και προστατεύοντας την κληρονομιά μας.

στον Κύκλο της Ζωής μας

ΠΡΟΓΡΑΜΜΑ ΕΤΑΙΡΙΚΗΣ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗΣ ΕΥΘΥΝΗΣ

FRIDAY 4 OCTOBER /7:30PM / FREE ADMISSIONLecture by THOMAS SIMAKUSoliloquy Cycle – Sweet and/or Sour?

In this lecture, Dr Thomas Simaku, Reader in Composition, University of York, discusses the genesis and processes involved in his Soliloquy Cycle, including the award-winning work Soliloquy V - Flauto Acerbo! The Lecture is in English. Duration approximately 60 minutes.

THOMAS SIMAKU

Thomas Simaku (b.1958) gained a PhD in Composition from University of York where he studied with David Blake. Winner of the coveted Lionel Robbins Memorial Scholarship in 1993, he also was the Leonard Bernstein Fellow in Composition at Tanglewood, USA (1996) studying with Bernard Rands, and a fellow at the Composers’ Workshop, California State University (1998), with Brian Ferneyhough.

Published in England by University of York Music Press and Emersion Edition, Simaku’s music has been reaching audiences all over Europe and the USA for more than two decades, and it has been awarded a host of accolades for its expressive qualities and its unique blend of intensity and modernism. His works have been selected by international juries in nine editions of ISCM World Music Days, including the 2012 Festival in Belgium. His works have been broadcast worldwide and performed byrenowned ensembles and orchestras. Prestigious awards include the First Prize of the Serocki International Competition (2004), Leverhulme Fellowship, and a three-year fellowship from Arts & Humanities Research Council in London. In 2009, Simaku received a British Composer Award from BASCA for his work Soliloquy V – Flauto Acerbo, which the judging panel described as ‘visionary and entirely original’. Simaku holds the position of Reader in Composition at the University of York. Most recently, he

FRIDAY 4 OCTOBER /9:30PM / FREE ADMISSIONFilm Screening: JOHN CAGE – JOURNEYS IN SOUND (2012)

“I think our aim should be to have more and more access to the enjoyment of life” – John Cage

A sonic innovator or an expert on chance? A writer or an anarchist? A specialist in mushrooms or a performance artist? A Zen master or a cook? John Cage was all of these things.

This documentary by Oscar-winner Allan Miller and Emmy-winner Paul Smaczny pays tribute to the most fascinating American avant-garde composer John Cage. Shot in America, Germany and Japan, the program premieres rare archival footage; presenting concert excerpts and a set of short episodes, featuring associates of Cage and contemporary artists, playfully delineating different aspects of John Cage. The documentary features interviews with Yoko Ono, David Tudor, Christian Wolff, Steffen Schleiermacher, Irvine Arditti, Toshio Hosokawa, Mayumi Miyata, Calvin Tomkins and many others. John Cage – Journeys in Sound is delightful and enthralling to both Cage novices as well as die-hard fans.Runtime: 66 minutes

SATURDAY 5 OCTOBER / 7:30PM / FREE ADMISSIONLecture by NOURITZA MATOSSIAN Recollections on the Cyprus Music Workshop 1973

The Cyprus Music Workshop, organized in 1973 in Lapithos, was the first ever event in Cyprus to present contemporary music by Cypriot and visiting foreign musicians. The Workshop was documented on film, by Leandros Avraamides. The Lecture is in English. Duration approximately 90 minutes.

As Nouritza Matossian remembers: “The Cyprus Music Workshop started as a dream - to bring together musicians from different countries to live and work in a genuine Cypriot community with Cypriot musicians. The idea that each person paid for his own travelling and living expenses, spent a proportion of the day swimming and getting acquainted with Cyprus playing music mornings and evenings without being paid, sounded too idealistic to those who first heard of it. ‘Impossible’, they said. It caught the imagination of 35 wonderful musicians however. And it became a reality. The workshop became a community within the first few days of starting. We were forced, owing to a limited budget, to share accommodation in close quarters, to cook meals in turn for the whole group and to take care of one another. Two beautifully situated schools were our home and workshop in Lapithos; the village people immediately embraced us, gave every assistance, came nightly to our rehearsals and showed us in every way that we were welcome. Every day a large volume of music was played in every one of the six rooms. Groups played orchestral works, string quartets, wind quintets, and improvised. The Electronic Studio was constantly visited and the first tape composition ever made in Cyprus was realised there. We opened our rehearsals to the public, played in Kyrenia Harbour, recorded for the CyBC. We listened to Cyprus Folk music and danced to it with our friends from the village. Many musicians from Cyprus joined us not only as guests but stayed to live with us as members, asking whether there would be a Workshop next year. The purpose of the Workshop was not simply to prepare a Concert programme but to create music in a collective situation where all living conditions were shared, where music was as natural a part of life as eating and sleeping.”

NOURITZA MATOSSIAN

Nouritza Matossian is one of the world’s leading experts on Iannis Xenakis. She published the first biography and critical study of his work, Iannis Xenakis after ten years’ close collaboration with him. The book has become an essential reading for students and performers of Xenakis. Matossian collaborated with Dennis Marks on the documentary film on Xenakis for BBC2, Something Rich and Strange.

She studied and interviewed major avant-garde composers such as Berio, Boulez, Stockhausen, Scelsi. Nouritza Matossian introduced live electroacoustic and synthesized music for the first time in Cyprus in 1973 with the Cyprus Music Workshop, Lapithos, which toured the island before the Turkish invasion of 1974. Matossian’s 1998 book Black Angel, The Life of Arshile Gorky (1998, Random House) was written after twenty years’ research. Ararat, the award-winning film by Atom Egoyan and Miramax, was partly inspired by the Black Angel. She acted as consultant to Egoyan who modelled the female lead role Ani on her. Matossian also wrote and performs a solo show on Gorky’s life from the viewpoint of his four beloved women with images and music. It has been produced worldwide over 80 times at venues including the Barbican, Tate Modern, London, New York, Los Angeles, the Edinburgh Festival, Cyprus, Paris, Lebanon, Iran, Romania and Georgia. In Armenia she performed it simultaneously in two languages. Her film on the Armenian editor who was murdered in Turkey in 2007, A Heart of Two Nations, Hrant Dink won the Public’s Prize in the Pomegranate Armenian Film Festival in Toronto. Matossian broadcasts on the BBC and contributes to several newspapers and magazines, including The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist, and The Observer. She was Honorary Cultural Attache for the Armenian Embassy in London from 1991 until 2000. Born in Cyprus of Armenian parents, educated in England, Nouritza Matossian read Philosophy at the University of London, studied music, theatre and mime in Germany, Dartington and Paris; she has a command of nine languages. She has also served as Honorary Cultural Attache to the Armenian Embassy, and is an activist in human rights.

SATURDAY 5 OCTOBER / 9:15PM / FREE ADMISSIONNatalie Yiaxi’s THE MOMENT

Visual artist Natalie Yiaxi was born in Nicosia in 1980. She studied Communication, Culture and Media at Coventry University, and received Masters degrees (both with distinction) on Creative and Media Enterprises from the University of Warwick, and on Book Arts from the University of the Arts London.

Apart from her solo show 35 Book Experiments, at the Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia, in 2012, Yiaxi’s group exhibitions included: Oo, The Cyprus Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013, curated by Raimundas Malasauskas, Venice, Italy; Rooms 2013, 2013, Kappatos Gallery at ST. George Lycabbetus Hotel, curated by Yiannis Toumazis, Athens; At Maroudias, 2012, curated by Re Aphrodite, Cyprus Ethnological Museum, House of Hatzigiorgakis Kornesios, Nicosia; Palimpsest 2012, Artspace Nicosia and Dusseldorf Germany; Drawing Room 2011, curated by Maria Stathi, Omikron Gallery, Nicosia; Degree show, 2011, Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London; Things change, you know, 2011, New Gallery London, London; Swap, in collaboration with the National Irish Visual Arts Library, 2011, Dublin and London; Hidden Spaces, 2011, curator Danny Aldred, Camberwell College of Arts, London.

Yiaxi’s works are included in the following collections and publications/catalogues: Guide BoOK (Para catalogue of the Cyprus- Lithuania Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library (Venice Biennale collection), Massachusetts and Tate Library Collection of Artists Books, London; [ ] (untitled), Tate Library Collection of Artists Books, London and Camberwell College of Arts Collection of Artists Books, London; What really happened here, Camberwell College of Arts Collection of Artists Books, London; A brief account of the esoteric architecture of insidious sentiments illustrated with the use of e-doodling, Camberwell College of Arts Collection of Artists Books, London; Rooms 2013 Contemporary Art show, published by Kappatos Gallery Athens; Terra Mediterranea In Crisis, published by Nicosia Municipal Art Center, 2012.

“... I was working on the scroll for an exhibition in Athens and working on Duchamp’s inframince, so I was sensitive to intervals especially between things considered the same. And I thought about the imperceptiple divisions of TIME. So I recorded the clock in my living room and then I added an extra ticking sound right after the initial ticking sounds and then another ticking sound…”

© Natalie Yiaxi

ALWAYS A BETTER WAY

Leave the city speechless. New Toyota Yaris Hybrid.Traffic lights stop and stare as it glides silently by. Speed cameras love its sharp styling. And petrol pumps hate its fuel economy. Toyota brings together 15 years of world-leading hybrid technology in the smartest ever urban car. The all new Yaris Hybrid with outstanding 3,5L/100km fuel economy, emissions of only 79g/km and silent electric city driving. New Toyota Yaris Hybrid. Silence the City.

100HP

PERFORMANCE

79gCO2 / km

LOW EMISSIONS

3.5L / l00km

FUEL ECONOMY

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ALWAYS A BETTER WAY

Leave the city speechless. New Toyota Yaris Hybrid.Traffic lights stop and stare as it glides silently by. Speed cameras love its sharp styling. And petrol pumps hate its fuel economy. Toyota brings together 15 years of world-leading hybrid technology in the smartest ever urban car. The all new Yaris Hybrid with outstanding 3,5L/100km fuel economy, emissions of only 79g/km and silent electric city driving. New Toyota Yaris Hybrid. Silence the City.

100HP

PERFORMANCE

79gCO2 / km

LOW EMISSIONS

3.5L / l00km

FUEL ECONOMY

DICKRAN ΟUΖΟUΝΙΑΝ & CO LTD: • NICOSIA TEL. 22 400000 • LIMASSOL TEL. 25 713000 • LARNACA TEL. 24 636488 • PAPHOS TEL. 26 960600 • PARALIMNI TEL. 23 740200www.toyota.com.cy [email protected]

ARIANNA ECONOMOU

Arianna Economou is a dance artist and dance- activist in the community, a pioneer giving Cyprus dance a place within the European contemporary arts since 1981.

She studied Dance and Theatre Studies in the UK at the Ballet Rambert School of Dance, the London School of Contemporary Dance, Dartington College of Arts, and Dance and Drama in Education at Exeter University UK. She furthered her studies in Body Mind Centering with Vera Orlock and completed a course on Developmental Movement in Berkeley California in the US.

Since her return to Cyprus in 1981, Arianna Economou has been instrumental in bringing to Cyprus world acclaimed performance artists in improvisation and performance, organizing workshops and performing with them. Economou is the Director of Echo Arts Living Arts Center. She is also the Director of the Dance-Gate Lefksosia Cyprus, an affiliated organization member of the European Dancehouse Network EDN and now partner of MODUL DANCE – an EU funded project directed by EDN. Since 2009, Dance Gate has been running the “No_Body” Dance and Performance Arts Festival – a yearly dance festival in Nicosia. In June 2011, Economou organized the Dance/Body at the Crossroads of Cultures dance conference.

Economou’s own solo and group works vary from text and narrative as the “ site” or pure movement research all marked with a running theme of identity & topos toward transformation. Since 2003 Arianna Economou has been collaborating with Dorinda Hulton, Horst Weierstall and Peter Hulton on Performance Training in Conflict Zones, and Cross Border research Projects initiated in Nicosia the last divided capital in Europe to explore a framework for a new aesthetic for creating performances in a Conflict Zone. In 2005, Arianna Economou has been awarded the “Tefkros Anthias and Theodosis Pierides Cultural Award” and The Melina Mercouri prize from the Cyprus Theatre Organization.

SUNDAY 6 OCTOBER / 10:30AM / FREE ADMISSIONLecture by the NEUE VOCALSOLISTEN Contemporary Vocal Techniques as used in Seminal Works of the 20th Century

SUNDAY 6 OCTOBER / 8:30PM / TICKET: €10Concert with the NEUE VOCALSOLISTEN

PROGRAMME:


José-María Sánchez-Verdú (b. 1968)Scriptvra Antiqva for 5 voices (2010/12) CYPRUS PREMIERE

Andreas Dohmen (b. 1962)infra for 5 voices (2008) CYPRUS PREMIERE Carola Bauckholt (b. 1959)Stroh for 4 voices (2012) CYPRUS PREMIERE Luciano Berio (1925-2003)A-Ronne for 5 voices (1974) CYPRUS PREMIERE

NEUE VOCALSOLISTEN Sarah Maria Sun / soprano Truike van der Poel / mezzo-soprano Martin Nagy / tenorGuillermo Anzorena / baritone Andreas Fischer / bass

The Neue Vocalsolisten was established as an ensemble specializing in the interpretation of contemporary vocal music in 1984. Founded under the artistic management of Musik der Jahrhunderte, the vocal chamber ensemble has been artistically independent since the year 2000.

The New Vocalsolisten comprises seven concert and opera soloists, with a collective range reaching from coloratura soprano over countertenor to “basso profondo”. Through its unique artistic creativity, the Ensemble shapes its work on chamber music and forms its collaborations with composers and other interpreters. Their partners are specialist ensembles and radio orchestras, opera houses and the free theatre scene, electronic studios and countless organizers of contemporary music festivals and concert series in the world.

The Ensemble’s chief interest lies on research: exploring new sounds, new vocal techniques and new forms of articulation, whereby great emphasis is placed on establishing a dialogue with composers. Each year, the ensemble premiers about twenty new works. Central to the Ensemble’s artistic concept are the areas of music theatre and the interdisciplinary work with electronics, video, visual arts and literature, as well as the juxtaposition of contrasting elements found in ancient and contemporary music.

Neue Vocalsolisten’s Concert and Lecture, as part of the 5th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival, are supported by the Region of Baden-Württemberg, Musik der Jahrhunderte and the Goethe Institut Cyprus

Neue Vocalsolisten6 October 2013Programme Notes:


Born in Rome in 1963, Lucia Ronchetti studied Composition and Computer Music at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and Philosophy at the University of Rome. In Paris, she took composition seminars with Gérard Grisey, participated in the annual computer music courses at IRCAM and obtained her PhD in musicology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études en Sorbonne, under the direction of François Lesure. In 2005 she was Visiting Scholar (Fulbright fellow) at the Columbia University Music Department in New York, at the invitation of Tristan Murail. Other important working experiences include those with Silvano Bussotti (1981), SalvatoreSciarrino (1989), Hans Werner Henze (1993), Folkmar Hein (1998), André Richard (2003).

Lucia Ronchetti has frequently received grants and been composer in residence: Yaddo, New York; DAAD, Berlin; Staatsoper of Stuttgart; MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH (USA); Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.

For her music theatre projects she collaborated with writers Ermanno Cavazzoni, Ivan Vladislavic, Eugene Ostashevsky, artists Toti Scialoja, Alberto Sorbelli, Judith Cahen, Dörte Meyer, Adrian Tranquilli, Elisabetta Benassi, Mirella Weingarten and sound designersMarie-Hélène Serra, Folkmar Hein, André Richard, Reinhold Braig, Carl Faia, Olivier Pasquet and Thomas Seelig.

In 2011 her chamber opera Lezioni di Tenebra was co-produced by Konzerthaus Berlin, Contemporanea-Auditorium Parco della Musica Roma, Kunstfestspielen Herrenhausen-Hannover, Salzburg Biennale and her chamber opera Last Desire was presented in a new production at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. In 2012-2015 she will compose a music theatre work in three seasons for the Semperoper of Dresden and a new opera for the Nationaltheater of Mannheim with libretto by Ermanno Cavazzoni.

Stradivarius published the CDs Portrait in 2009 (Neue Vocalsolisten, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Roland Kluttig) and Xylocopa violacea in 2011 (Barbara Maurer, Reinhold Braig, Experimentalstudio Freiburg). Lezioni di tenebra (K.Guedes, D.Gloger, Vocal Consort Berlin, PMCE) was published in 2011 by Parco della Musica Records. The CD Drammaturgie (featuring Neue Vocalsolisten and Quartetto Arditti) is published by Kairos (2012). Her recent works include Le Palais du silence (Drammaturgia, Festival d’Automne, Paris 2013), Contrascena (Music

Theatre, Semperoper, Dresden 2012), Helicopters and butterflies (Action concert piece, Festival d’Automne, Paris 2012), and 3e32 Naufragio di terra (Choral Opera, Società Barattelli, L’Aquila 2012).

Composed in 2012/13 the Blumenstudien (Flower Studies for 5 Voices) is based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen (The Metamorphosis of the Plants). The poem is however interspersed with excerpts from other writers’ verses about flowers and nature – Ludwig Uhland’s Der Mohn; Barthold Heinrich Brockes’ Die Traubenhyazinthe; Rainer Maria Rilke’s Blaue Hortensie; Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Blüthenreife; Frühlings-Willkommen by Sigmund von Birken and Johannes Klaj; Christian Morgenstern’s Butterblumengelbe Wiesen; and Angelus Silesius’ Ohne Warum.

Goethe’s Metamorphose der Pflanzen:

Closely observe how the plant, by little and little progressing,Step by step guided on, changeth to blossom and fruit!First from the seed it unravels itself, as soon as the silentFruit-bearing womb of the earth kindly allows its escape.And to the charms of the light, the holy, the ever-in-motion,Trusteth the delicate leaves, feebly beginning to shoot.

Simply slumbered the force in the seed; a germ of the future.Peacefully locked in itself, ‘neath the integument lay,Leaf, and root, and bud, still void of colour, and shapeless;Thus doth the kernel, while dry, cover that motionless life.Upward then strives it to swell, in gentle moisture confiding,And, from the night where it dwelt, straightway ascendeth to light.

Soon a shoot, succeeding it, rises on high, and reneweth,Piling up node upon node, ever the primitive form;Yet not ever alike; for the following leaf, as thou seest,Ever produceth itself, fashioned in manifold ways.Longer, more indented, in points and in parts more divided,Which, all-deformed until now, slept in the organ below.

Many ribbed and toothed, on a surface juicy and swelling,Free and unending the shoot seemeth in fulness to be;Yet here Nature restraineth, with powerful hands, the formation,And to a perfect end, guided with softness its growth,Less abundantly yielding the sap, contracting the vessels,So that the figure ere long gentler effects doth disclose.Soon and in silence is checked the growth of the vigorous branches,

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And the rib of the stalk fuller becometh in form.Leafless, however, and quick the tenderer stem then upspringeth,And a miraculous sight doth the observer enchant.Ranged in a circle in numbers that now are small, and now countless,Gather the small-sized leaves close by the side of their like.Round the axis compressed the sheltering calyx unfoldeth.And, as the perfectest type, brilliant-hued coronals forms.Thus doth Nature bloom, in glory still nobler and fuller,Showing, in order arranged, member on member upreared.

Hymen hovereth o’er them, and scents delicious and mightyStream forth their fragrance so sweet, all things enlivening around.Presently, parcelled out, unnumbered germs are seen swelling,Sweetly concealed in the womb, where is made perfect the fruit.

Here doth Nature close the ring of her forces eternal;Yet doth a new one, at once, cling to the one gone before,So that the chain be prolonged for ever through all generations,And that the whole may have life, e’en as enjoyed by each part.

José-María Sánchez-Verdú (b. 1968)Scriptvra Antiqva for 5 voices (Madrigal book I) (2010/12) CYPRUS PREMIERE

José M. Sánchez-Verdú was born in Algeciras (Spain) in 1968. He studied Orchestra Conducting, Musicology and Composition at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música of Madrid (with, among others, A. García Abril and García Asensio) and has a degree in Law (Universidad Complutense). He studied composition with F. Donatoni in Siena and completed a number of courses in Spain, France, Germany and Holland. He finished his postgraduate studies under H. Zender at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kust in Frankfurt from 1996 to 1999 and gained his first experience as the Composer in Residence at the Spanish Academy in Rome in 1997 and during the DAAD/la Caixa scholarship from 1997 to 1999. As a conductor, he has worked with different ensembles and orchestras such as Ensemble Modern, KNM Berlin, Neue Vocaksolisten Stuttgart, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada. He received numerous commissions, amongst others, from the Hannover Biennial for new music, the Expo 2000 German Pavilion, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Orquesta Nacional de España, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, Festival Internacional de Música y Danza of

Granada, Deutsche Oper Berlin (Silence, chamber opera, 2005), Munich Biennial (GRAMMA, chamber opera, 2006), Teatro Real de Madrid (El viaje a Simorgh, opera, 2007), Venice Biennale/Operadohy/Musik der Jahrhubderte Stuttgart (AURA, opera 2009), Festival Ultraschall Berlin, Beethoven-Festspiele Bonn, Salzburg Biennale.

José M. Sánchez-Verdú has won a number of composition awards, including the Cristóbal Halffter (1995), three awards from the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE, 1996 and 1997), Ciutat d’Alcoi (1997), the Spanish Ministry of Culture/Colegio de España in Paris (1998), First Composition Prize of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie (1999), finalist at the Irino Composition Prize in Tokyo (1999), Förderpreis of the Ernst von Siemens Foundation for Music in Munich (2001), Composition Prize of the Bergische Biennale in Wuppertal (2001), Spain’s National Music Award (2003), The Antara Award (Lima International Festival of Contemporary Music, 2007). He has been Composer in Residence at the Jünger künstler Festival (Bayreuth), 5 Festival de Música Contemporánea of Lima (Peru), Charinthischer Sommer Festival (Austria), Festival Ostertöne (Hamburg), and Cairo Contemporary Music Days.

He currently is a lecturer of Composition at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Aragon (Zaragoza) and at the Carl Maria von Weber Musikhochschule in Dresden. His works are published by Breitkopf & Härtel.

Scriptvra Antiqva for 5 voices is a Madrigal cycle that deals with old Latin Epitaphs. The connection is not only semantic; there is also an epigraphic consideration: the text, as material and as calligraphy, is also represented as ornamentation and written structure in a musical way. Texts and voices are represented as “script” through processes such as repetition, erosion, maturation and almost erasure.

The Madrigal Book I is a commissioned work for the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and it is dedicated to them, as a result of our friendship and as a further development and deepening of my fruitful and amazing collaboration with this wonderful vocal ensemble.

IEus tu viator, veni hoc et queiesce pusilu.Innuis et negitas? Tamen hoc redendus tubi.

IIViator audi, si libet, intus veni,tabula est aena quae te cuncta perdocet.

IIIPapilio volitans aranist:illi praeda repens, huic data mors subitast.

IVFortuna spondet multa multis, praestat nemini.

Vive in dies et horas, nam proprium est nihil.

VSola in terris omnibusuno eodemque in die vitam adepta functaquest.

VIVer tibi contribuat sua munera florea grataEt tibi grata comis nutet aestiva voluptasReddat et autumnus Bacchi tibi munera semperAc leve hibemi tempus tellure dicetur.

VIIFunctus honorato senio plenusque dierumevocor ed superos: pignora, quid gemitis?

Translation from the German language © Elli Michael

Andreas Dohmen (b. 1962)infra for 5 voices (2008) CYPRUS PREMIERE

German composer and performer Andreas Dohmen was born in 1952. He studied the double-bass with Rolf Hesister and composition with Dieter Torkewitz at the Folkwang Hochschule fur Musik in Essen. He continued his compositional studies with Franco Donatoni in Milan (1988-90). He has lectured at the music academies of Essen, Duisburg and Dortmund. Since 2002, he has been teaching new music analysis and instrumentation at the Hochschule fur Musik in Bremen. He has received many compositional awards and distinctions, including from the WDR Young Composers’ forum in Cologne, Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, 1st Prize at the Premio Valentine Bucchi Composition Competition in Rome, 1st Prize and Folkwang Prize at the Composition Competition in Stuttgart. His works have been performed at prestigious festivals such as Donaueschinger Musik- tage, New Chamber Music Days in Wittem, Éclat in Stuttgart, Musik der Zeit in Cologne, musica viva in Munich. He has cooperated with renowned new music ensembles including Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten, Schlagquartett Cologne, and Freiburg’s Ensemble Aventure.

I move –yes i can still forget;and by forgetting,I am moved back and forth; and I stand,while all around everything is always different,at the zenith of the darkness,of my coldness –between continuous decisions, my opponentrules there,the henchmen are anonymousand work hard –and cheerfully comes the downfallthere is still

vulnerability and reveriesome sand in process,and even the one who behavesvirtuously and obstinately,shakes the structure – still the mistakes are built beyond recognition;they even love wearing off both measures“both…as well as” have long goneunder my skin;nothing is foreseeable,nothing can hold the direction;even doubt is for mein all ways and endsnot sure enough anymore.

Translation from the German language © Elli Michael

Carola Bauckholt (b. 1959)Stroh for 4 voices (2012) CYPRUS PREMIERE

The sound world of Carol Bauckholt is always equipped with tender theatrics and often with refined compositional irony. The titling of her compositions evokes a personal milieu of objects, situations and sensitivities: Der gefaltete Blick (The folded look), Polizeitrieb (Police chase), Schraubdichtung (Screw-poetry), Zopf (Plait), Maulwurf (Mole), Pumpe (Pump), Nestwärme (Nest warmth), Hubschrauber (Helicopter), Blinder Leck (Blind leak)… and now Stroh (Straw). Associative mine-ground. Wherever you bump, there is lightning and illumination through the perception of the finely embedded references. Sometimes you fly in the air. While listening to her compositions laughter might stick to your throat, although they could have never been approached in a funny or superficially humoristic way. A totally personal observation of the world through the scalpel with which she cuts, bevels and differentiates her notes.

© Hans-Peter Jahn

“I’m attracted by the individual voice colour. That is why I reduced the instrumentation down to four voices – a transparent quartet. In the piano the timbre is perceivable more differently. In depth, the sound is more solid. Then, I’m interested in what there is underneath singing. The vocal fry, the strohbass, multiphonics, false vocal chords resonating, air sounds, aspirated chords. Sounds with a strong texture. The words resulted from the articulation, that is, vowels and consonants result mainly out of the perception of the sound. The voices are archaic and have a direct contact with the subconscious. I want to touch this beyond any clichés.”

© Carola BauckholtTranslation from the German language © Elli Michael

Luciano Berio (1925-2003)A-Ronne for 5 voices (1974) CYPRUS PREMIERE

A-Ronne: Documentary on a poem by Edoardo Sanguineti for five actors.

“In A-Ronne, composed in May 1974 at Hilversum for the Dutch Radio, I tackle again an old problem which is as vast and ancient as language itself, and is also the fundamental problem and theme of all vocal music: vocal articulation (in its broadest sense) is meaning.

Strictly speaking A-Ronne is not a musical composition - even if the procedures which often organize its course are musical (use of inflections and intonations, development of alliterations and transitions between sound and noise, occasional use of elementary melodies, polyphonies and heterophonies). The musical sense of A-Ronne is primordial: that is, it is common to all experiences, from daily speech to theatre, where changes in expression imply and document changes in meaning. This is why I prefer to define this work as a documentary on a poem by Edoardo Sanguineti, as one would say a documentary on a painting or on an exotic country. Originally conceived as a radio programme, A-Ronne may suggest perhaps a tenuous connection with the representative madrigals, that is the theatre of the ears (of the mind, we would call it now) of the late 16th century.

Sanguineti’s poem is not treated as a text to set to music but rather as a text to be analysed and as a generator of vocal situations and different expressive characters. The poem, repeated about twenty times and almost always from beginning to end, is divided in three short strophes: the theme of the first strophe is the Beginning, the theme of the second is the Middle, and that of the third one is the End. The text is rigorously and obsessively built from quotations in different languages that go from the beginning of the New Testament of John (in Latin, Greek and German: Luther’s translation and changes made by Goethe in his Faust) to a verse by T. S. Eliot; from a verse by Dante to the first words of the Communist Manifesto; from a few words of an essay by Barthes on Bataille to the three abbreviations (Ette, Conne, Ronne, in their Florentine designation) with which in old Italian dictionaries the alphabet concluded after Z: hence the saying, no longer in use, dalla A al Ronne instead of dalla A alla Z.

The musical sense of A-Ronne is to be found in the relation that is established between a written text and a “grammar” of vocal behaviour, between a poem that is constantly faithful to its own words and a vocal articulation that continuously modifies its meaning and its referential aspects. It happens that the two levels (that of the written text and that of the vocal behaviour) always interact in a different way, always producing new meanings. This is exactly what happens in all vocal music and in daily speech, where the relation between the

two levels (the grammatical one and the acoustic one) is substantially responsible for the infinite possibilities of human speech and singing.”

© Luciano Berio

FORTHCOMING EVENTS AT THE SHOE FACTORY

Tuesday 22 October 2013VIOLIN & PIANO RECITAL Raskin & FleischmannWorks by Mozart, Brahms, and Korngold

Sunday 27 - Wednesday 30 October 2013AUSTRIAN DOCUMENTARY DAYSMAMA ILLEGAL ABENDLAND DANUBE HOSPITAL727 DAYS WITHOUT KARAMO

FORTHCOMING EVENTS AT THE SHOE FACTORY

Thursday 7 November 2013VIOLIN & PIANO RECITAL Elif Akyar / violin & Hyun Sook Tekin / piano Works by Leclair, Franck, Saint-Saens, Wieniawski, and premieres by Turkish composer A. Adnan Saygun and Cypriot composer Andreas Tsiartas.

Supported by

Friday 6 December 2013PIANO RECITAL Gloria CampanerWorks by Scarlatti, Liszt, Verdi and Wagner

In collaboration with the Embassy of

Italy in Cyprus

Friday 22 November 2013PIANO RECITAL Panayiotis Trochopoulos Works by Scriabin and Alkan

BECOME A VALUED FRIEND 2013

■Contributors (€90-€149 for single membership, €150- €249 for couple membership) A Contributor of the Pharos Arts Foundation confers the following benefits: ● 20 – 30% (discount on all tickets for Foundation events ● 20% discount on Pharos’ publications / art-catalogues ● 25% - 35% discount on commercial CDs by participating artists, sold at events ● 10% discount on books at the Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia ● Advance notice of forthcoming events through post and/or Email ● Advance notice of film screenings at The Shoe Factory ● Over the phone Ticket Reservations for events through the Pharos Arts Foundation Box Office ● Invitations to after-concert wine receptions ● Recognition on the sponsors’ page of all concert programmes ● Acknowledgment in the end-of-the-year Review publication ● Recognition on the Foundation’s website ● One (two for couple) complimentary ticket voucher(s) to be used at any Pharos concerts throughout the year ■Supporters of the Pharos Arts Foundation (from €250) A Supporter is entitled to all the benefits of Contributor membership (couple). In addition: ● A highlights CD of Pharos 2013 concerts ● Complimentary Concert programme for all concerts ● End-of-the-year Review publication ● Six complimentary ticket vouchers to be used at any Pharos concerts throughout the year ■The Pharos Circle (from €750) The Pharos Circle membership confers all the benefits of the Supporter membership. In addition: ● A complimentary Pharos art-catalogue ● A complimentary commercial CD by participating artists ● Complimentary tickets to all the 13th International Pharos Chamber Music Festival ● Complimentary tickets to all the 5th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival ● Priority seating when booking is confirmed. ● Invitations to educational activities and rehearsals ● Invitations to receptions and after-concert dinners with the artists ● A gift package of 6 audio CDs from Pharos 2013 Concerts ■Patrons: Over €1.000 Patrons receive all the benefits of the Pharos Circle membership as well as additional individually tailored benefits to suit one’s preferences including: ● If desired, recognition on promotional material, invitations and advertisements of two events. ● Gift package of audio CDs from all Pharos 2013 Concerts ● A Complimentary Hotel Room (double) for one night during the 13th International Chamber Music Festival ● Complimentary tickets to all the events

Please return the completed form to Pharos Arts Foundation, P.O. Box 21425, 1508 Nicosia, Cyprus. Fax: +357 22663538 Email: [email protected] Name:..................................................................................................................................

Address:............................................................................................................. Flat No:.............. Post Code:.................... City:.......................... P.O. Box:......................... Telephone No:........................ Fax No:................................ E-mail Address:..................................................................... I wish to make a contribution of €:...............................to the Pharos Arts Foundation □ I wish to receive information via email only Contribution Method: ■ Cash ■ Cheque (made payable to Pharos Arts Foundation) Bank:................................... Cheque No:................. ■Credit Card: American Express/ Visa/ MasterCard/ Diners (please circle one) No.:......................................... Expiry Date:.................................... CCV2 Code:............. Name on card:........................................................ Signature:................................................ ■Bank's Standing Order / Direct Debit: For your convenience, you may instruct your bank to create a Standing Order for an Annual Contribution to Pharos Arts Foundation. Please send Pharos Arts Foundation a copy of the Standing Order/ Direct Debit. Bank Details: Pharos Arts Foundation, Alpha Bank Ltd, Nicosia Main Branch (202), P.O. Box 21661, 1596 Nicosia, Cyprus. Account Number: 202-220-002294-0, IBAN: CY51 0090 0202 0002 0222 0002 2940, Swift BIC: ABKLCY2N. Bank:........................................................................................... Date of first Contribution:................................. For more information about Corporate Sponsorship please contact the Pharos Arts Foundation

CORPORATE SUPPORTERS BENEFITS 2013

■CORPORATE CONTRIBUTORS (From €2,000) A Corporate Contributor of the Pharos Arts Foundation confers the following benefits: ● Company LOGO to appear on: - Print Advertisements of three events - TV Commercial of one event - Tickets of three events ● Company Advertisement (A4, full-page, colour) to appear inside the concert booklets of three events ● Company Advertisement (A4, full-page, colour) to appear inside the end-of-the-year Review Publication ● Eight complimentary ticket vouchers to be used at any concert throughout the year ■COPRORATE SPONSORS (from €5,000) A Corporate Sponsor of the Pharos Arts Foundation confers the following benefits: ● Company LOGO to appear on: - Print advertisements of eight events - TV commercials of four events - Tickets of eight events ● Company Advertisement (A4, full-page, colour) to appear inside the concert booklets of eight events ● Company Advertisement (A4, full-page, colour) to appear inside the end-of-the-year Review Publication ● Sixteen complimentary ticket vouchers to be used throughout the year. ● Preferential seating for Board members attending the event ■THE PHAROS CORPORATE CIRCLE (from €10,000) A Pharos Corporate Circle of the Pharos Arts Foundation confers the following benefits: ● Company LOGO to appear on: - Print advertisements of all events - TV commercials of all events - Banners & Billboards of all large scale events - Tickets of all events ● Company Advertisement (A4, full-page, colour) to appear inside the concert booklets of all events ● Company Advertisement (A4, full-page, colour) to appear inside the end-of-the-year Review Publication ● A feature / interview with an executive of the Company in the end-of-the-year Review Publication (upon request) ● Publicity Material / Products of Company to be displayed during all events (upon request) ● Four complimentary tickets for each concert ● Preferential seating for Board members attending events ● Private preview of concert rehearsals, educational concerts, exhibitions, as well as opportunities to meet with the artists for Company’s personnel and valued customers ■CORPORATE PATRONS (Over €20,000) A Corporate Patron of the Pharos Arts Foundation confers the following benefits: ● Company LOGO to appear on: - Print advertisements of all events - TV commercials of all events - Tickets of all events - Banners & Billboards of all large scale events ● Company Advertisement (A4, full-page, colour) to appear in the concert booklets of all events (cover or inside back cover) ● Inclusion of Company profile in all concert booklets (upon request) ● Company Advertisement (A4, full-page, colour) to appear in the end-of-the-year Review Publication ● A feature / interview with an executive of the Company in the end-of-the-year Review Publication (upon request) ● Creation of Banner with Company advertisement in the foyer of venue for all concerts (upon request) ● Publicity Material / Products of Company to be displayed during all events (upon request) ● 100 copies of the audio recording of the event sponsored by the Company, for Company’s personnel and clients ● Six complimentary tickets for each concert organised by the Pharos Arts Foundation ● Preferential seating for Board members attending events ● Private preview of concert rehearsals, educational concerts, exhibitions, as well as opportunities to meet with the artists for Company’s personnel and valued customers ● A Complimentary Hotel Room (double) for one night during the 13th International Chamber Music Festival

In addition to the above benefits, all corporate sponsors receive: ● Company NAME to be acknowledged on the Foundation's website, in the end-of-the-year Review Publication and all concert booklets ● Company LOGO to appear on Foundation’s website with hyperlink to Company’s Website ● Invitations to after-concert receptions ● 20% discount on tickets and Pharos’ publications / art-catalogues for Company personnel ● 25% - 35% discount on commercial CDs by participating artists, sold at events for Company Personnel ● 10% discount on books at the Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia for all Company personnel ● Advance notice of forthcoming events and film screenings through post and/or Email ● 10 highlights CD of Pharos 2013 concerts ● Complimentary Concert programme for all concerts for all Company personnel ● 10 copies of the end-of-the-year Review publication For more details and ideas on Corporate Sponsorship, please contact the Pharos Arts Foundation. Tel: 22 663871 / Email: [email protected]

The Goddess at Delikipos

On the occasion of my lecture and workshop on Heraclitus last fall for the Pharos Trust, I had the opportunity to visit the pro-posed site for the Centre for the Arts, located some twenty minutes from Nicosia amid the pines and olive trees of Delikipos. My wife Astrid and I toured the five acre tract with Garo Keheyan, President of the Trust, whose vision for the future development of the site includes spaces for the performing arts, visual arts, research and conferences. As we were guided through the site, I was struck by the power of the setting and its symbolic relationship to Earth Mother sites throughout the Mediterranean.

The Pharos site sits on a slight rise and is surrounded by low hills, particularly noticeable to the west, where a kind of natural avenue of cleared land leads the eye to two rounded hills in the distance. I was struck immediately by the resemblance of this setting to places like Knossos in Crete and to numerous examples of temple placement on the Greek mainland. I suggested to Garo that the site he chose had certain fundamental characteristics to sacred sites in antiquity and that he must have recog-nized at some level the power of the place.

As a general matter these days, we no longer look at landscape as anything but a resource or an obstacle to development. We cut mindlessly through the landscape to make our roads and cities, and we slice through hills without once acknowledging that at one time, the landscape actually spoke to us, telling us who we were and how we were connected to the cosmos. Our eye once took in the horizon line – the perfect circle of the eye meeting the ever-so-slight curvature of the horizon, telling us where we were. Once we placed our sacred dwellings, our palaces, our temples, literally in the lap of the gods, where we were held, nurtured and protected.

Prior to 2000 BC throughout the Mediterranean, at places like Knossos, the earth itself was seen and tangibly understood as Mother, where the Earth Mother Goddess was worshipped from the Indus River Valley to Medea, to Ephesus on the shore of what is now western Turkey, to Egypt, Crete and points west to the ends of the known world. The Earth Mother ruled every aspects of human life. She gave life, provided food, shelter, and the raw materials to mould implements as well as images of herself. In caves surrounding the sea, figurines of the goddess have been unearthed as ancient as 50,000 years to mutely testify to her pervasive influence.

Before she dwelled in temples or was served by acolytes, the Earth Mother existed and was worshipped in the landscape itself, in the rounded hills, the springs issuing from clefts in the rock, in deep caves, in gentle mounds and fertile valleys. Even now, the human mind apprehends gigantic images of the human form reclining in the landscape. Only in the past fifty years or so, however, have archaeologists begun to recognize these Earth Mother images again in relation to the placement of ancient sacred sites. In other words, only recently have they looked up from their spades and brushes to notice the contexts in which they work.

Valuable insights into the subtleties of sacred architecture and landscape was done in the Fifties and Sixties by Vincent Scully, formerly of Yale University, who studied the relationship of the Earth Goddess to palaces and temples throughout the Mediter-ranean. In his 1962 book The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods Scully demonstrated that forms of the goddess in the landscape can be recognized at every palace site in the Mediterranean. It is useful to remember that before the great temple cultures of the Archaic and Classical periods, settlements tended to gather around palaces, where priest-kings ruled. In choosing a site for settlement early peoples made use of the same landscape elements.

The first and most important element was en enclosed valley, or natural megaron, of varying size in which the palace was set, usually on a slight rise. Second, there arose in the near distance, two gently rounded hills on an axis with the orientation of the palace, usually to the north or south. Finally, in the distance, often between the rounded hills, there rose a higher, double peaked or cleft mountain some distance beyond the hills but on the same axis. Other dramatic elements might also reflect im-ages of the Earth Mother, such as rounded slopes, deep gullies, or streams emerging from clefts and running to the sea. These features represented the female cleft, and at most sites, prominent breasts. The rise on which the palace was situated symbol-ized the mons veneris of the goddess, placing the palace quite literally in the lap of the goddess.

These features of the landscape appear throughout Greece and relate to the later functions of temple siting as well. The impor-tant point is that as a result of this influence we cannot study these sites isolated from their natural context. The architecture of palaces and temples within the landscape reflects a unity. For the people to know that the whole community was being held, embodied, in the goddess meant that the activities and devotions taking place there were controlled by her rhythms and they embraced a structure greater than personal desires or thoughts. The goddess was a matrix within which the entire life of the community was motivated and carried out.

In the specific case of Cyprus, where Aphrodite rules, her image appears at numerous sites, the most important and ancient of which is probably near Paphos. Here, at the seat of the Aphrodite cult on the island, the standard view is that construction on the site began around the 12th century BC, but it is more probable that the Earth Mother had her presence here much earlier and that when the Olympian gods arrived, Aphrodite took her place. If we look carefully at the landscape surrounding the site, we see the two low hills in the foreground and the slight rise where the original temple (or palace complex in Neolithic times) was oriented.

In addition to the placement of sacred sites in the landscape, orientation in the broader cosmos was also relevant and figures into the rituals and ceremonies celebrating the changing seasons and cycle of the year. Astronomical events relative to planets and constellations were keyed to landscape features in the orientation of temples. The rising of planets each year on an axis to the temple signalled the occasion for celebration and for the rituals associated with the god in residence.

Although I cannot find current data, further research on the Paphos site may well reveal that the planet Venus (long associated with Aphrodite/Venus) rose between those hills on the day associated with Aphrodite’s rising from the sea. Research by Jean Richer in his valuable book Sacred Geometry of the Ancient Greeks, also shows that the Paphos site is aligned with similar sites in Sardis and Mt Ida in ancient Anatolia, both sacred to the Mother Goddess. This axis forms part of a vast system of sites includ-ing several in Egypt as well, further illustrating the relation of landscape and astronomy so important to ancient peoples.

As we consider, then, the beautiful site of the future Centre of the Arts of the Pharos Trust, it is important to place it in this broader context. Those who will someday come to the site in Delikipos to hear music or conduct important international business may never consciously look up from their pleasure or work to notice the special qualities of where they are, but the landscape will speak subtly to them nonetheless.

These subtle influences, or powers, pervade the environment. The site possesses a special atmosphere, most notably a palpable sense of harmony and coherence. If developed consciously, this atmosphere will influence all that takes place there, just as sacred temple sites enhanced the intentions of those who came to commune with the gods.

These are normally intangible matters, but in the case of the Pharos site, I felt its influence quite clearly and feel privileged to have been introduced to it, especially in its nearly virgin state. If the structures to be developed there orient correctly to the landscape in design and direction, the relationship to the unifying energies will be enhanced and will lend to the performances and work done there a transcendental presence. And those privileged to take part in its life and work will not soon forget the experience.

Richard G Geldard

Richard Geldard, author of Remembering Heraclitus: Philosopher of Riddles, came to Cyprus in October 2003 and gave a lecture – examining both classic and modern interpretations of the fragments of Heraclitus – as well as a workshop on the fragments in light of the Socratic principle of the examined life.

The Pharos CentreA vision for the Future

Since its inception, fifteen years ago, the Cyprus-based Pharos Arts Foundation has established aninternational reputation for artistic and cultural excellence. The Foundation’s programme includes a regular concert and recital series, an annual Chamber Music Festival now in its thirteenth year, a recently established Contemporary Music Festival, a music education programme, exhibitions of contemporary art, publishing, and a lecture series on issues of global importance with distinguished speakers.

Our vision is to expand these activities by creating a centre for Art, Culture, and Dialogue in a beautiful setting of ancient olive groves and pine forest at Delikipos. The Centre will provide space for the visual andperforming arts as well as a library and accommodation for visiting artists, writers, composers, musicians, and thinkers from all disciplines and backgrounds.

An important element of this Centre would be the Pharos Forum, providing a venue for dialogue and debate on issues that concern us all. Universal spiritual and material progress which we call civilization can only flourish in what has become the global village of the 21st century if we share basic ethical principles and develop a new world view, a paradigm determined by a reverence for life and nature as well as creative expression. The distinguishing characteristics of the Pharos Forum will undoubtedly be its setting and its human scale, bringing people together from all over the world to an intimate natural environment that allows the landscape to work its magic, and gives individuals time to develop genuine friendships and valuable conversations. John McMurray, the Scottish philosopher said ‘The purpose of all meaningful knowledge is action, and the purpose of all meaningful action is friendship’. The Pharos Forum will cultivate these crucial notions and offer new collaborative ways of addressing difference and discord – of moving away from private understandings, as Heraclitus would have put it, towards perceptions of unity.

An additional crucial component of the project is the emphasis that would be given to music and the arts. All cultures and religions have expressed their highest aspirations through music and the arts. Sophocles says ‘He who neglects the arts when young has lost the past and is the dead to the future’. The Pharos Centre will offer participants opportunities to listen to music-making of the highest order from the western classical tradition as well as other cultures and to engage in dialogue with leading international artists.

The Pharos Centre, situated on an island at a pivotal point between three continents and diverse cultures, will bring together men and women of goodwill to find a common language and to explore ways in which we can develop a saner, healthier and more sustainable world at the beginning of a millennium. If you would like to learn more about the Centre and contribute towards the realisation of our vision, you may contact the Pharos Arts Foundation at [email protected].

sergey khachatryan arnaldo cohen borodin string … music festivals/contemporary... · sergey...

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