92NY | Wild Up: Darkness Sounding – Andrew McIntosh plays Biber's Rosary Sonatas

Wild Up and 92NY

Sunday, March 23, 2025 @ 2:00pm – 4:30pm (EDT)

Buttenwieser Hall at 92NY, New York, NY, United States

$48-$63 (discounts available for Friends of 92Y, Himan Brown Program)

Andrew McIntosh, baroque violin
Ian Pritchard, harpsichord & organ
Maxine Eilander, baroque harp
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, viola da gamba

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber — Rosenkranzsonaten ("Rosary Sonatas" or "Mystery Sonatas")

Los Angeles-based music collective Wild Up breaks their acclaimed "Darkness Sounding" festival out of LA for the first time, premiering it in New York City on 92NY's stages.

The trio of concerts follows the enormous success of Wild Up's "Radical Adornment: The Music of Julius Eastman" at 92NY in 2023. The festival of concerts, conversations and workshops exploring how sound and music shape our understanding of the world has been called "sincere, outdoorsy, a little trippy" by The New York Times. Convening around themes of mindfulness and nature, "Darkness Sounding" centers on deep listening, intentional gathering, and thoughtful questioning to foster awareness and expand connections to ourselves, each other, and the natural world. Join us for this boundary-pushing weekend of concert experiences merging listening, ritual, and community.

Baroque violinist and Wild Up member Andrew McIntosh will give a rare performance of Heinrich Biber's Rosary Sonatas. Composed circa 1675, the Rosary Sonatas are a set of fifteen violin sonatas, each featuring a different re-tuning of the open strings, with radical musical depictions of earthquakes, trumpets, prayer, suffering, adoration, awe, violence, love, pain, acceptance, crowns, joy, teaching, mystery, and victory. These sonatas served as an inspiration for composer Tony Conrad in the 1950s when he was a violin student at Harvard, sending him down the path of re-tuning which would later become central to his work with the Theater of Eternal Music. Conrad's iconic 1964 recording, Four Violins (which Wild Up is performing in McIntosh's arrangement on Friday night), is in the same tuning as Biber's 10th Sonata , which depicts the crucifixion of Jesus. A recent performance by McIntosh of the Rosary Sonatas in Los Angeles was described by Alex Ross in The New Yorker as one of the most memorable performances of 2023.

This performance will run approximately 2.5 hours and will include two intermissions.