UltraSchall 2001

A Richard BARRETT perspective

8:00pm, 23 January 2001
Haus des Rundfunks, Sender Freies Berlin

abglanzbeladen  . . .  auseinandergeschrieben (1996-98)

Peter NEVILLE vibraphone solo

knospend-gespaltener (1995)

Carl ROSMAN, solo clarinet in C

transmission (1997-99)

Daryl BUCKLEY electric guitar with live electronics

Another heavenly day (1990)

Carl ROSMAN, clarinet in E flat
Daryl BUCKLEY, electric guitar
Kees BOERSMA, contrabass
Mikel TOMS conductor

interference (2000)

Carl ROSMAN, solo contrabass clarinet, voice and pedal bass drum

Stilleben mit Wurmloch (2000)

Ute WASSERMANN, mezzo-soprano
Richard BARRETT, live electronics

ELISION Ensemble's association with Richard BARRETT began with a letter on 7 February 1989, and has since grown to be a defining and pivotal artistic relationship for both composer and ensemble. This concert celebrates a large part of this history and dynamic. Another Heavenly Day, the very first work written for ELISION by Richard now receives a fifth performance from the ensemble with almost the complete original line-up of musicians. abglanzbeladen  . . .  ausinandergeschrieben, the percussion solo written for Peter NEVILLE, and drawn from the large cycle Opening of the Mouth, also marks an inspired and continuous relationship with a musician who has developed a particularly close working relationship with the composer. As does interference, commissioned by ELISION, written for and dedicated to the clarinettist Carl ROSMAN.

Both interference and transmission for electric guitar and live electronics form part of another new and major cycle entitled DARK MATTER. Written for two ensembles, ELISION and the Cikada Ensemble ensemble of Oslo, DARK MATTER is the latest episode in the relationship, taking on and exploring the domain of cross-artform work, complex musical structures interspersed amongst and affected by the very architecture of a created performing environment. In the words of the composer himself, "DARK MATTER continues a trend from my previous collaborations with ELISION (principally negatives and -- especially -- Opening of the Mouth) towards increasingly extended and intricately-organised musical conglomerations. This long-term collaborative relationship is what has made such projects thinkable and eventually realisable; the newer collaboration with Cikada and Per Inge BJØRLO creates an opportunity for further expansion and refinement of this idea, and its enrichment by an influx of new personalities, abilities, ideas and possibilities."

Richard also writes

"Many of my musical experiences of the last ten years, both as composer and (predominantly improvisational) performer, have in retrospect pointed towards a more speculative exploration of the role of the composer in relation to the `interpreter´. This concert programme embodies a wide spectrum of possible results: precisely-notated music whose nature is intimately conditioned by a contemplation of the performer/instrument relationship, for which my term is `radically idiomatic´ composition (the pieces for clarinets and percussion); the same precise notation as a structural matrix from which unpredictable events break out, as if exceeding the limits of what may be rationally composed and notated (transmission); and finally an approach which begins at the point where notation becomes inadequate, and in so doing dissolves the composer/performer relationship into a collaboration where the `division of labour´ is completely fluid (Stilleben  . . . ). This is not however a linear sequence of `development´ but a widening of possibilities. Also, while these variations in compositional approach might or might not be interesting in themselves, I don't intend that they should be in the foreground of a listener's attention. What you hear is not the experiment itself but its (provisional) result: the experience of music as sound/form/presence is infinitely more significant than any description of its origins."
--Richard BARRETT

Presented by Festival UltraSchall 2001. ELISION, Australia's national new music ensemble, gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Commonwealth of Australia through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and the The University of Queensland through the Office of the Vice Chancellor, Professor John HAY