Visitors to the Block Museum of Art on February 7, 2018 enjoyed William Blake’s art through music when students from the Bienen School of Music performed two song cycles inspired by Blake: Benjamin Britten’s 1965 Songs and Proverbs of William Blake and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s 1957 Ten Blake Songs. The performances took place in the museum’s gallery surrounded by […]
Read moreFeast of Astonishments Opening Program: Riana Anthony performs Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman’s “Projection One” (1950), performed by Riana Anthony, Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, Master of Music, Class of 2017. The piece explores categories of pizzicato, arco and arco-like ponticello, as well as harmonics. It was written on graph paper with the pitch range of the instrument indicated in boxes inside larger boxes, […]
Read moreFeast of Astonishments Opening Program: Myrtil Mitanga Performs Nam Jun Paik
Nam Jun Paik’s “One for Violin Solo” (1962), performed by Myrtil Mitanga, Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, Class of 2017. The piece undermines clichés of the classical music genre through an unanticipated gesture. Charlotte Moorman, who valued drama, humor, theatricality, and subversion in her work, was drawn to the ceremony of the piece, as […]
Read moreFeast of Astonishments Opening Program: Drake Driscoll Performs John Cage
John Cage’s “Cello Etude Boreales, no. 1” (1978) performed by Drake Driscoll, Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, Class of 2018. The pieces was created using star charts from the Atlas Borealis as a source of randomness. Cage traced the star maps and then used additional chance operations to determine, with painstaking precision, the specific […]
Read moreFeast of Astonishments Opening Program: Drake Driscoll performs Takehisa Kosugi
Takehisa Kosugi’s “Chamber Music” (1962), performed by Drake Driscoll, Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, Class of 2018. The “music” resides in her movements within the bag, in the sound it makes, and in the sequences of shapes and forms it assumes.
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