by Mike Telin
One person’s music is another’s noise. On Friday, January 16 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Italian musicologist, composer and musician Luciano Chessa led a fascinating and brilliantly programmed concert by the “Orchestra of Future Noise Intoners” or “Intonarumori,” which challenged listeners to hear the musical possibilities that can be found in noise. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin & Daniel Hathaway
It’s common for people who don’t like contemporary music to describe it as “noise,” but in 1913, the Italian painter and forward-thinker Luigi Russolo proclaimed intentionally-created noise to be the concert music of the future. In his Futurist Manifesto, L’arte dei rumori (The Art of Noises), Russolo summarizes the evolution of Western music and arrives at a radical conclusion:
Ancient life was all silence. In the 19th Century, with the invention of machines, Noise was born. Today, Noise is triumphant and reigns sovereign over the sensibility of men…As it grows ever more complicated today, musical art seeks out combinations more dissonant, stranger, and harsher for the ear. Thus, it comes ever closer to the noise-sound…We must break out of the limited circle of sounds [of the orchestra] and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Two sound extravaganzas by environmental composer and Pulitzer prizewinner John Luther Adams will launch the 2014-2015 Performing Arts Series of the Cleveland Museum of Art — though not at the museum.
Veils and Vesper, a cycle of electronic works composed in 2005, will begin a two-month run on Saturday, September 20 at the newly restored Historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ohio City. A slow-moving, “immersive sound installation,” Veils and Vesper lasts six hours and allows the listener to “create her own mix by moving through the space”. Visiting hours through December 1 are Wednesdays through Saturdays from Noon to 5:00 pm and Thursdays from Noon to 8:00 pm. Admission is free
Adam’s second contribution to the series is Inuksuit, a 2009 daylong site-specific work devised for nine to 99 percussionists to be dispersed over a wide outdoor area, in this case Lakeview Cemetery, and inspired by “the Stonehenge-like markers used by the Inuit and other native peoples to orient themselves in Arctic spaces.” The free performance begins at 2:00 pm on Sunday, September 21. [Read more…]