Listen to This: Micromusic
Listen to This is a series of music concerts curated by composers. Micromusic, the second in the series, is a concert of where music is sampled, transcribed, saturated, over-amplified and held under the microscope.
Curated by Joanna Bailie and exploring how contemporary composers transform techniques borrowed from the worlds of rock and pop, the evening features three major pieces for chamber ensemble and electronics performed by Apartment House.
American composer Phill Niblock’s 5 More String Quartets features four amplified live musicians playing over a stack of overdubbed string quartet recordings. The music gradually moves towards a single note, but the volume and closeness of the sounds mean that as listeners, mysterious things begin happening in our musical imagination.
Johannes Kreidler's in hyper intervals smashes expectations of remix culture, creating a rebellious union of the acoustic and electronic. Juxtaposing samples of bland, anonymous pop music with transcriptions for live acoustic instruments, the piece inhabits a strange universe bordered by pure sounds on one side and musical meaning on the other.
Atopia (hyperamplified) by Yannis Kyriakides explores the relationship between loudness and distance, inspired by the sounds of sand drifting past a kitchen window in Cairo. A structure of slowly moving, delicate detuned harmonies is literally over-amplified to reveal a microworld of musical detail.
Listen to in hyper intervals on Johannes Kreidler's website (text in German)
Listen to Atopia (hyperamplified) on Yannis Kyriadides' website
