Thursday 3 April 2014, 8pm
A return to OTO for Romanian spectralist composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram after their enthralling show at OTO with The Hyperion Ensemble, Tim Hodgkinson, Chris Cutler and Stephen O'Malley last year. Iancu Dumitrescu is considered one of the leaders of the spectral music trend at a worldwide level. In 1976 he founded the HYPERION Ensemble, proposing a new aesthetic in today’s music, hyper-spectral, based on the radiant power of sound, within its microcosmic complexity - which is questioned, analyzed, re-composed from a spectral perspective. Ana-Maria Avram is a composer, pianist, conductor, born in 1961 in Bucharest, Romania. She studied composition at the National University of Music- Bucharest and musical aesthetics at Sorbonne, Paris. She has been a member of the Hyperion Ensemble since 1988. Her music is affiliated with the spectral music trend and incorporates the outward semblance of abstraction of archetypal sound, achieving its full development in the synthesis of electroacoustic and instrumental sources.
A return to OTO for Romanian spectralist composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram after their enthralling show at OTO with The Hyperion Ensemble, Tim Hodgkinson, Chris Cutler and Stephen O'Malley last year.
Iancu Dumitrescu is considered one of the leaders of the spectral music trend at a worldwide level. In 1976 he founded the HYPERION Ensemble, proposing a new aesthetic in today’s music, hyper-spectral, based on the radiant power of sound, within its microcosmic complexity - which is questioned, analyzed, re-composed from a spectral perspective. Ana-Maria Avram is a composer, pianist, conductor, born in 1961 in Bucharest, Romania. She studied composition at the National University of Music- Bucharest and musical aesthetics at Sorbonne, Paris. She has been a member of the Hyperion Ensemble since 1988. Her music is affiliated with the spectral music trend and incorporates the outward semblance of abstraction of archetypal sound, achieving its full development in the synthesis of electroacoustic and instrumental sources.
"Dumitrescu is an imposing figure, and his presence immediately gave impetus to the proceedings before a note had even been sounded. There was a palpable tension as Dumitrescu led the musicians – all eyes fixed on the Romanian’s black-clad frame – through fitful bursts of discordant noise that bordered on rambunctious rock. Dumitrescu’s music works with sustain and release: distorted bowed guitar notes, scatter-shot drum fills, cavernous manipulations of the piano strings and fluttering clarinet parps all piled up, to be followed, with one sweep of the conductor’s arm, by heavy near-silence punctuated by the omnipresent digital rustles from the laptop. Despite not playing, Dumitrescu remained the focal point, his twisted, rapt facial expression the mark of a man inhabited by his music." - Joseph Burnett, The Liminal (review of the performance at OTO in January 2013)
IANCU DUMITRESCU
Iancu Dumitrescu is considered one of the leaders of the spectral music trend at a worldwide level. In 1976 he founded the HYPERION Ensemble, proposing a new aesthetic in today’s music, hyper-spectral, based on the radiant power of sound, within its microcosmic complexity - which is questioned, analyzed, re-composed from a spectral perspective.
He centers his work on the phenomenological principle, which Sergiu Celibidache made him to discover, and which Dumitrescu applies to the composition itself, and on the idea of acousmatics. Acousmatics represents for Dumitrescu not only « the art of disguising a sonic source » in a concrete approach, but the very metaphor of the sound, infinite, cryptical alchemy applied to the sound material.
Iancu Dumitrescu has born the 15th of July 1944 in Sibiu, Romania, son of a University Professor and Mathematics teacher. He studied at the Musical Academy in Bucharest and followed that with systematic studies of conducting and musical phenomenology with Sergiu Celibidache. From 1966, for two decades he launches into a fervent musicological and journalistic activity working under incredibly difficult political conditions and cultural repression. At the same time he was working as a composer and his early discoveries of the sound core, the natural harmonics, the microscopic approach of the sound world etc. The idea of acousmatic. The Spectralism - have remained central in his composition since.
In the mid-seventies Dumitrescu started the Hyperion Ensemble, a fluid, artistic group of performers and composers who will occupy for 40 years, one of the most important and dynamic role in Romanian music.
"Dumitrescu and Avram's pieces for large ensemble are like no others I've heard, with the possible and surprising exception of those by John Coltrane, whose 1965-67 works (Ascension and Meditations in particular) share a penchant for relatively static structures that nevertheless teem with inner life." - Paris Transatlantic Magazine
After extensive explorations, he finally foresees his own vision on sonic world he has pursued since. Thus, the essential concepts of "phenomenological reduction" and "pure intuition" became functional in composition. According to Dumitrescu, it is the first time phenomenology is utilized as a true method of composition, which re-poses in question essential concepts, nevertheless hidden at that time: inspiration, vision, creativity, imagination.
In 1991 Dumitrescu inaugurated the EDITION MODERN CD Label in collaboration with Chris Cutler's "RER Megacorp". The label has released more than 20 CDs with the music of Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria AVRAM.
Dumitrescu is also Founder and Artistic Director of the International Music Festivals of Computer Assisted Music Acousmania, Musica Nova, Musica Viva and the International Spectral Music Festival SPECTRUM XXI - held annually in three European capitals.
He has created more than 200 works, chamber music, electro acoustic, orchestral music, computer music, etc.
Full Biography
Extended interview b/t Dumitrescu and Ryan Kirk
ANA-MARIA AVRAM
Ana-Maria Avram is a composer, pianist, conductor, born in 1961 in Bucharest, Romania. She studied composition at the National University of Music- Bucharest and musical aesthetics at Sorbonne, Paris. She has been a member of the Hyperion Ensemble since 1988. Her music is affiliated with the spectral music trend and incorporates the outward semblance of abstraction of archetypal sound, achieving its full development in the synthesis of electroacoustic and instrumental sources. She composed since now around 130 works, music for soloists, chamber music, music for orchestra, electronic music and computer assisted music including commissions from the Kronos Quartet (San Francisco) Ç 20 Jahrhundert È from Vienna, soloists from l’Orchestre National de France, orchestras as Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra, Romanian National Orchestra, Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra and L’Orchestre de Chambre de Roumanie amongst many others.
Full Biography
Ana-Maria Avram is a composer, pianist, conductor, born in 1961 in Bucharest, Romania. She studied composition at the National University of Music- Bucharest and musical aesthetics at Sorbonne, Paris. She has been a member of the Hyperion Ensemble since 1988. Her music is affiliated with the spectral music trend and incorporates the outward semblance of abstraction of archetypal sound, achieving its full development in the synthesis of electroacoustic and instrumental sources. She composed since now around 130 works, music for soloists, chamber music, music for orchestra, electronic music and computer assisted music including commissions from the Kronos Quartet (San Francisco) Ç 20 Jahrhundert È from Vienna, soloists from l’Orchestre National de France, orchestras as Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra, Romanian National Orchestra, Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra and L’Orchestre de Chambre de Roumanie amongst many others.
“Dumitrescu is an imposing figure, and his presence immediately gave impetus to the proceedings before a note had even been sounded. There was a palpable tension as Dumitrescu led the musicians – all eyes fixed on the Romanian’s black-clad frame – through fitful bursts of discordant noise that bordered on rambunctious rock. Dumitrescu’s music works with sustain and release: distorted bowed guitar notes, scatter-shot drum fills, cavernous manipulations of the piano strings and fluttering clarinet parps all piled up, to be followed, with one sweep of the conductor’s arm, by heavy near-silence punctuated by the omnipresent digital rustles from the laptop. Despite not playing, Dumitrescu remained the focal point, his twisted, rapt facial expression the mark of a man inhabited by his music.” – Joseph Burnett, The Liminal (review of the performance at OTO in January 2013)
Bass-clarinetist and multi-instrumentalist Yoni Silver’s activities include hyper-spectral adventures with Iancu Dumitrescu's Hyperion Ensemble; a bass clarinet and percussion duo with Steve Noble; a bass clarinet/violin and possessed vocals duo with Sharon Gal; Denis D’or with Grundik Kasyansky and Tom Wheatley; bass clarinet and drums duo with Crystabel Riley, and solo performances on amplified bass clarinet.
He has appeared on labels such as Creative Sources, Confront Recordings, Wasted Capital, Chocolate Monk and Edition Modern.
With compositions featured at international festivals, such as Tectonics, Huddersfield, Spectrum XXI, Nordlyd, and Ars Musica, and two sets of works for ensemble out on the Mode label, Hodgkinson also has a powerful commitment to intense and highly energised performance practice. In over forty years' work he has placed himself in a series of definitive projects, whether as cofounder of the seminal Henry Cow group, as saxophonist with influential avant metal band God, or as bass clarinet soloist in the spectral compositions of Iancu Dumitrescu. His lap steel guitar playing remains completely uncategorisable, bringing subdued and not so subdued echoes of rock musics and other ethnicities.
http://www.timhodgkinson.co.uk/
