he Contemporary Columbus It concludes its season with an extraordinary programme: three experimental pieces that link piano and spoken voice, challenging the boundaries between music and sound, visual and conceptual art.
In the first part of the program you will hear a selection from the course Voices and pianoby Peter Ablinger, a work for piano and recording of the spoken voices of historical and cultural figures.
In these works Singing is replaced by recorded audioreproduced by a speaker who takes the singer’s place, while the pianist interprets the piece, focusing not on what each person says, but on the physical characteristics, inflections, tone, and rhythm of the speech.
Uplinger was a major figure in European experimental music Voices and piano He proposes a radical experiment: listening to the human voice as if it were music and listening to the piano as if it were speaking. In this process, the composer blurs the boundaries between musical and non-musical, between meaning and pure sonic texture. The work invites you to discover what usually goes unnoticed: the sound of the word in its physical, resonant and almost microscopic dimension.
Voices and piano It is a monumental cycle, on this occasion pieces dedicated to Bertolt Brecht, Hans Eisler, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carmen Balero, John Cage, Morton Feldman and Alvin Lussier will be presented, all selected by the distinguished pianist. Jonas Ahonenspecializes in this reference.
In addition, another piece will be heard as a world premiere, written by Ablinger this year, shortly before his death. The widget is integrated into Voices and pianoincludes an anthropological recording made in Tierra del Fuego of the voice of Lola Kibja, the last Selk’nam shaman.
These acoustic “portraits” will dialogue with piano miniatures by Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann and Anton Webern.
Works of the Moroccan composer Rafael Languelat (1989) Second whip (torso) (2015-2025)The first part will be closed. The starting point for his work was a painting by Caravaggio and the piece attempts to evoke it The flogging of Christ and the pictorial technique of chiaroscuro.
The composer works on the border between musical and visual elements: how much is the music a visual element and how much is the visual a musical element? This is the question that revolves around the work of the young composer. The intense rhythmic structure of the repeated note allows an echo to emerge, anticipating the symbolic action of Alvin Lussier, I’m sitting in a roomWhich will be listened to in the second part, and the concert will conclude with participation Maricel Alvarez As a reader. Sebastian Feria He will be responsible for the technical execution, as well as the audio-visual and sound design of the entire concert.
Dating back to 1969, Lucier’s work explores the way space modifies and rewrites the human voice. Lussier recorded a script that he read himself and then played that recording around the room, recording it over and over again. With each repetition, the resonances of space amplify certain frequencies until the sound dissolves into pure sound, an acoustic structure that replaces speech.
More than one piece about technology, It is a poetic meditation on listening and the fragility of speechThe room itself becomes the interpreter and co-author of the work.
contemporary columbus cycle, Voices and piano
program: Voices and pianoPeter Ablinger; Second flagellum (trunk)Rafael Languelat; I’m sitting in a roomAlvin Lussier
Jonas Ahonen, piano; Maricel Alvarez, artist; Sebastian Feria, sound and audio-visual design
job: Tuesday 2 at 8 pm