The diversity of nature, humanity, and history opens up in Time of Music’s 40th anniversary programme. ”Compared to last year’s emphasis on smaller scale works, this year we will hear larger compositions performed by international ensembles”, festival’s artistic director Johan Tallgren reveals. Building on the theme Mundi Novi – New Worlds, the largest programme in the festival’s history gives room for voices that have often been neglected.
Philip Venables’ Answer Machine Tape, 1987 tells queer history of the late visual artist David Wojnarowicz. Using Wojnarowicz’s actual answer machine tape’s contents as foundation and extending his instrument with motion sensors, Zubin Kanga’s piano creates unique visual elements to support the music. A different angle on LGBT history is taken in Femenine, a work by a late queer afro-american composer Julius Eastman, whose music is currently experiencing a posthumous renaissance. Femenine is performed by New York-based Talea Ensemble, which will also perform the world premiere of Mark Applebaum’s Venture Capital Punishment in the festival’s opening concert.
Led by composer and gambist Eva Reiter, contemporary music ensemble Ictus’ performance Eupepsia Dyspepsia combines a seminar lecture with a musical act, as it takes a critical look on the history of colonialism. In Charles Uzor’s multilingual composition Mothertongue, the Swedish KamarensembleN and the Austrian mezzo-soprano Isabelle Pfefferkorn perform parts of Paul Celan’s and Samuel Beckett’s works. Vocal ensemble Neue Vocalsolisten interprets the new madrigals of our time in Chaya Czernowin’s Immaterial and the pieces composed by different Beirut-based composers in a musical sequence titled Vocal affairs.
Diversity of nature is vividly present in the festival’s concerts. Commissioned by Time of Music, Minna Leinonen’s string quartet Three Point Eight uses the on-going ecological crisis as its starting point. Mauro Lanza’s and Andrea Vallen’s Systema naturae gives equal room on the stage for traditional instruments and electromechanical objects emulating primordial sounds. The work is inspired by Linnean taxonomy and is performed by Schallfeld Ensemble.
As a part of the Creative Europe project, Ulysses Percussion Ensemble performs two intriguing premieres. The Finnish premiere of Talking Metals, Talking Drums, a piece by Mioko Yukuyama inspired by human interaction, and the world premiere of James Alexandropoulos-McEwanin’s a/mi(d)st a/noise_and, -[d]is_interference///. Among all the contemporary works, the festival provides concerts with compositions by renowned modernists such as Luigi Nono and Iánnis Xenákis.
Artistic director Johan Tallgren finds the premieres especially intriguing. ”Even I’m not sure, what will eventually surprise us!”
FURTHER INFORMATION
Communications Coordinator Paavo Kässi, press.musiikinaika@gmail.com +358 40 838 7276
Artistic Director Johan Tallgren, johan.tallgren@musiikinaika.org, +358 40 742 6345
Ticket Sale and Accomodation Minja Kuronen, minja.kuronen@musiikinaika.org, +358 (0)44 599 3195