Landman/Stadler Saxophone Duo
Monday, Feb. 24th at 7:30 PM
Dalton Recital Hall
Program
Elliott Sharp (USA) - Elephei for two tenor saxophones (2019) #*
Andreas Eduardo Frank (CH) – fresh, rough, golden for two saxophone players, video & electronics (2019) #*
Matias Far (ESP) - el poeta - en 7 letras, una de ellas releida for two alto saxophones (2013)
Paul Clift (AUS/CH) - duet/anagram for two tenor saxophones and electronics (2015)*
Program Notes
Elephei for two tenor saxophones (2019)
Composed during the summer of 2019, Elephei is a work of fixed duration and structure whose realization is unique with every performance. Using a simple instruction set for the transformation of dronalities, the two saxophonists manifest shifting vertical textures. As a result of close intervals, difference tones are created which in turn generate micro-rhythms that form a series of underlying pulses. - E#
Elliott Sharp is a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. His compositional strategies have encompassed the use of fractal geometry, chaos theory, algorithms, genetic metaphors, and new techniques for graphic notation to yield work that catalyzes a synesthetic approach to musicmaking as well as functioning as retinal art. In 2015, Sharp was awarded both the Berlin Prize and the Jahrespreis from der Deutscher Schallplatten Kritiks. In 2014 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fellowship from the Center for Transformative Media. He has been featured in the Darmstadt and Huddersfield festivals, New Music Stockholm, Au Printemps-Paris, Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale, and the Venice Biennale. His book “IrRational Music”, a mix of memoir, cultural discussion, and music theory was published in 2019. He is the subject of the documentary “Doing The Don't” and has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered.
Sharp's composition Storm of the Eye, composed for violinist Hilary Hahn, appeared on her Grammy-winning album “In 27 Pieces”. His opera Filiseti Mekidesi premiered at the RuhrTriennale in 2018 and his Walter Benjamin opera Port Bou premiered in NYC in 2014 at Issue Project Room and in Europe at Berlin Konzerthaus in 2015.
Sharp's collaborators have included Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; pianist Cecil Taylor; Ensemble Modern; pop singer Debbie Harry; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; Arditti, JACK, and Kronos quartets; jazz greats Jack Dejohnette and Sonny Sharrock; media artists Christian Marclay and Pierre Huyghe; Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians Of Jajouka.
fresh, rough, golden for two saxophone players, video & electronics (2019)
fresh, rough, golden is a sonic ritual, an exploration of the saxophone’s body. This piece zooms in on the unwanted, the sounds which normally are avoided, and redefines the most basic actions in the act of playing. Its starting point is the simple and mechanical opening and closing of the single keys, searching after those sounds which are produced by the instrument’s skeleton - by its screws, rods, and other complex mechanics. It searches for a new beauty in this fragile and vulnerable part of the instrument.
Once found, the piece follows a simple plan: cut the ties to our musical heritage, deconstruct and celebrate those most pure and simple mechanical sounds, and start a virtuoso reassembly of the rough, footage, in order to create a coherent sonic and performative mindset. - AEF
Andreas Eduardo Frank is a composer, media artist and performer whose work explores the interface of real and virtual, of music, performance, video and theatre. His pieces are typically borne out of an overarching poetic idea, which is then contextualized in the music in a manner that may range from comical to nihilistic. He enjoys playing with absurdity and humor, trying to sparkle with what does not shine in a virtuoso manner, building castles in the air with his music, without fear of tearing them down again, deriving from their debris a genuine notion of music which courageously flirts with other disciplines.
Mr. Frank has won many awards for this work, including a fellowship of the Academy Musiktheater heute, Gargonza Arts Award interdisciplinary residency fellowship, New York City’s MATA Festival, Ensemble Proton Bern’s Protonwerk No. 6, Progetto Positano Scholarship of the EVS Foundation (in cooperation with Ensemble Mosaik), SWR Experimental Studio residency for 2020, and the Composition Award of the City of Stuttgart. His music has been performed across Europe, Asia and North America. Andreas Eduardo Frank studied at the Würzburg Music Academy and at the Electronic Studio of the Basel Music Academy. He is currently co-Artistic Director of Ensemble Lemniscate.
el poeta for two alto saxophones (2013)
El Poeta, en siete letras una de ellas releida is the first part of Que se recuerda sin saberlo (metáforas de sombra del paraíso de V. Aleixandre), a series devoted entirely to the alto saxophone. The series begins with this duo, and follows with a quartet (with two alto saxophones), a trio and ends with a solo piece. It represents the organic and vital process of that fascinating instrument. I see the alto saxophone, with its sounds extended on a table like an orography, as fields asking to be traversed with a vision of its limits, a landscape. The starting point of the saxophone, key sounds, is its most fundamental sound. Here the sound is modified, making the keys “sing”.
I find it (key noise) fascinating material because of its hardness, its almost impossibility to be modified; almost always sounding the same, almost always unmusical. However it is ever present in the sound of the saxophone, no matter what is played there is always this distant noise. In this work I have used the keys to generate an observation (study) of this instrument, modifying the fundamental sound. The key generated from parasitism, synergy and symbiosis create folds in the layers of the saxophone sound in such way that the instrument is extended (along the duo and cycle) in fragile sound fields, due the fragility of the chosen keys and its faint sound balance in the ecosystem.
In fact I reproduce only such cases. Like someone who walks along the edges of the land keeping the balance, eyes set on the horizon. It is the exact expression of the kind of journey. These lands full of sound, that are constantly stacking and balancing, till his breaking point, creating, modifying, the natural terrain, building a sound quite literal, in his perception, a real sound, authentic, human sound, that demands a real being. I cannot avoid pointing both to tradition and to the poetic. Both fall out, for me, of the circle which creates the mark. – MF
Matías Far was born in 1973 in Palma de Mallorca, where he began his musical studies in composition with Xavier Carbonell. He later studied with José Luís de Delás in the “Aula de música de Alcalá de Henares” in Madrid, where he also attended seminars by Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino, Matthias Spahlinger, and Brian Ferneyhough. From 2005 until 2010 Far worked with the Andalusian composer Manuel Hidalgo while studying Music Theory with Matthias Hermann at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart.
Matías Far’s music has been performed in Spain, France, Switzerland, Germany and the United States. His music has been commissioned by Spanish and European institutions (Fundació Pilar and Joan Miró, Festival Ensems, Fundació ACA- Encontre de Compositors, Radiosinfonieorchesters Stuttgart des SWR) as well as private commissions by musicians, specialized ensembles and Festivals. This has led him to work for several years on a few extensive and complex works including his cycle of works for saxophone with different saxophone players and saxophone quartets. He is currently Chief of the composition department of the Conservatori Superior de Música de les Illes Balears and leads the Phona composition workshop (Phona Festival).
duet/anagram for two tenor saxophones & electronics (2015)
duet/anagram takes its title from a painting by Robert Rauschenberg which I first saw during a residency at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, where the painting is housed. Texts in the opening section are of Robert Rauschenberg discussing his general approach to painting; these are taken from the documentary, Painters Painting, directed by Emile de Antonio (1973). The “already-going surface” which Rauschenberg mentions is, in this case, the voice of Rauschenberg himself. - PC
Paul Clift is an Australian composer of instrumental and mixed music based in Basel, Switzerland. His music often attempts to make abstract associations with a variety of concepts such as linguistics, modernist literature, cognitive phenomena, and historical and extra- European, musical traditions. Paul’s works have been performed by ensembles including the JACK Quartet, ICE, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble l'Itinéraire, Argento, Mivos Quartet, Either/Or, Proton, and Novel Ensemble Modern.
Paul’s compositional outlook is marked by formative studies with Franck Bedrossian, George Benjamin, Jean-Luc Hervé, Fred Lerdahl, Philippe Leroux, Fabien Lévy, Tristan Murail and Georg-Friedrich Haas. He obtained a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Columbia University, New York, a Masters of Music at King's College, London, and completed the IRCAM Cursus de composition et d'informatique musicale, culminating in the premiere of With my limbs in the dark, composed in collaboration with choreographer Alban Richard. In 2016, Paul was awarded a residency at Villa Sträuli in Switzerland.
In addition to composing, Paul is active as a researcher; he has undertaken research- residencies notably at the Paul Sacher Foundation (2014) and IRCAM (2014-15). He is also the Artistic-Director of neuverBand, a new-music chamber ensemble based in Basel.
BIO
The Landman/Stadler Saxophone Duo and Andreas-Eduardo Frank perform the US premiere of the inter-disciplinary fresh, rough, and golden for saxophones, video, and electronics. The program also features the US premiere of Elliott Sharp's Elephei for two tenor saxophones, Paul Clift's duet/anagram for two tenor saxophones and electronics, and Matias Far's el poeta for two alto saxophones.
Joining the Duo for his work fresh, rough, and golden, Basel, Switzerland-based composer, media artist, and performer Andreas Eduardo Frank’s work explores the interface of real and virtual, of music, performance, video and theatre. Through a close collaboration with instrumentalists and artists he has developed a unique style that combines live performance and electronics with elements of “theatre musical” and subtle choreographies, as well as visuals through staging and video. Elliott Sharp has been a central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City for over 30 years, and his music has been performed by acclaimed artists including Ensemble Modern, the JACK Quartet, and even pop- singer Debbie Harry. He recently returned to NYC after living in Germany, having been awarded a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship and receiving the 2015 Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin.
The first work ever commissioned by the duo, Paul Clift's duet/anagram is a response to the Robert Rauschenberg painting of the same title. In this piece, recorded speech of Rauschenberg is played through speakers pointed into the bell of the saxophone and modulated through electronic means, but also through the opening and closing of different keys on the instruments. This "already-going surface", in the words of Rauschenberg, is complimented by delicate multiphonics traded between the instruments and then commented- on as the tenor saxophones are allowed to reach their full dynamic potential.
Spanish composer Matias Far's el poeta explores the micro and the macro sound world of the saxophone. Incidental sounds (the sound of keys opening for example) of saxophone playing are given the weight of musical gesture. The composer notates precisely the movement of the performers, focusing the audience's attention to how sound changes in space. The end of the piece is a sonic whirlwind of difference tones and doppler effect.
Landman/Stadler Saxophone Duo is a modular saxophone duo that spans the Atlantic between New York City and Germany. Both dedicated interpreters of new music, Geoffrey Landman and Patrick Stadler met in 2007 while students at the Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel. L/S Duo has performed in France, Switzerland, Germany, Singapore, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and has been featured on the IM FOKUS Concert Series in Berlin, the Composer’s Now Festival in Brooklyn, and were the featured guest artist for the 2019 Sounding Now Festival at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore. Both committed pedagogues, the duo has given Guest Artist recitals and masterclasses at the Manhattan School of Music, Berklee College of Music, Temple University, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, and the Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel. The Landman/Stadler Saxophone Duo has commissioned works by composers including Elliott Sharp, Andreas Eduardo Frank, Paul Clift, Fernando Manassero, and William Dougherty.