MATA Festival 2024 Closing Night: Open Waters
$45
- Olivier Glissant, conductor, Brooklyn Orchestra
Wenbin Lyu — Duke's Fantasy I
Mariel Teran — Manos de Tierra
Philip Glass — Águas da Amazônia (arr. Olivier Glissant / world premiere)
Connections: When a fully functioning body loses one of its senses (the ability to see, for example), the brain readjusts its connectivity to strengthen the other senses. In essence, it makes new connections in different ways. If we view humanity as a body, then 2020 was a year when the body of humanity was severely deprived of a major sense: its main mode of connection – physical interaction. Yet the collective brain reconfigured itself, and humanity strengthened connections in different ways. Humanity collectively released a silent message: connections are important and necessary for sanity, growth, development, existence. Connections is an acknowledgement of this collective statement.
Duke's Fantasy I is a graphic score piece with optional fixed media for open instrumentation, composed in June 2023. From the composer: "As a classical music trained composer, I continually seek to push the boundaries of my creativity. Composing this piece presented a significant challenge, as I could not directly control the sound world through traditional notation. However, I could guide the performers through detailed instructions, allowing for a unique and expressive interpretation. Duke's Fantasy I is divided into three distinct sections: Droplets' Dance, Digital Hearts, and Cosmic Reverie. Each section captures my curiosity and imagination, evoking a sense of wonder and exploration. Through the graphic score, I invite the performers and listeners to embark on a journey into a world of doodled fantasies and capture their own imaginations."
Manos de Tierra: The installation creates an immersive experience where live and recorded sounds interact, creating a complex sensorial atmosphere. This piece was created based on the sound instincts that every person possesses and also thinking about interactions of present and past, creating an atmosphere of different layers of sound in space.
Aguas da Amazonia: In the early 1990s, Philip Glass was traveling to Brazil every year. One of the enduring interactions which happened at that time was he was commissioned to write music for the dance troupe "Grupo Corpo." The resulting piece, Seven or Eight Sketches for a Ballet (later 12 Pieces for Ballet), was originally performed by the Brazilian percussion group Uakti. Uakti arranged these compositions and renamed them as they appear as tracks on the Aguas da Amazonia CD.
"Years ago when I first met Uakti, I saw their music and performance as a unique and beautiful contribution to the world of new and experimental music. I became friends with the musicians; I especially came to admire Marco's extraordinary ear for color and composition. I was therefore very pleased when some years later they proposed a collaboration. It would be a dance score for the ballet company Grupo Corpo of their city, Belo Horizonte. This CD represents a true melding of my music with their sensibilities. For me, it is a delight and a pleasure to hear the final result." – Philip Glass
Many of the pieces in this collection of sketches for the ballet were later taken by Glass and made into the first set of piano etudes which started to appear in 1994, as well as other things. Some selections, like "Japurá River," ended up in his 1995 opera La Belle et La Bête; "Negro River" became Etude No. 9, "Tapajós River" became Etude No. 4; and the most famous "Amazon River" became his most famous Etude No. 2. The album ends with the appropriately named "Metamorphosis No. 1" as Uakti was taking this musical material from Glass' hands and transforming it into something new.
Despite the enduring quality of the music itself, which has existed in these many forms (most persistently as piano etudes), the work known as Aguas da Amazonia doesn’t have a large performance history. The Chicago-based percussion group Third Coast Percussion made their own adaptations to perform it, and in 2017, encouraged by conductor Kristjan Järvi, had arranger Charles Coleman make an orchestral version, expanded with Järvi’s Absolute Ensemble, to perform in multimedia shows around the world. Considering this unwieldy performance history, conductor/composer/arranger Olivier Glissant took it upon himself to create a new orchestration for the Brooklyn Orchestra which would not require specialty percussion instruments and could be performed by any symphony orchestra around the world. Glissant's objective was to manage to recreate the rhythms and "feel" of the Brazilian element introduced by Uakti using only the symphony orchestra, thus increasing opportunities for ensembles around the world to perform this astounding work.
About Music at the Anthology (MATA)
Music at the Anthology (MATA) is an incubator for adventurous emerging artists experimenting with composition, multi-media, collaborative performance art, and every imaginable sound in between. We present, support, and commission the music of early-career composers, regardless of their stylistic views or aesthetic inclinations. Founded by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa in 1996 as a way to address the lack of presentation opportunities for unaffiliated composers, MATA has since developed into the world’s most sought-after performance opportunity for young and emerging composers.
https://www.matafestival.org/About Brooklyn Orchestra
The Brooklyn Orchestra is a symphonic ensemble dedicated to new music, striving to focus on contemporary composers. Created in 2015 by composer/conductor Olivier Glissant, the group was conceived to fuse genres of music that rarely meet on the classical stage and to bring music from multiple cultures to the orchestral repertoire, in an effort to make symphonic music accessible to a wider and more diverse audience.
https://www.brooklynorchestra.org/About Olivier Glissant, conductor, Brooklyn Orchestra
Based in Brooklyn, NY, Olivier Glissant is a composer, conductor, producer, and founder of Blacksalt Records. He created the Brooklyn Orchestra in 2015, a symphonic ensemble dedicated to new music and contemporary composers, working to fuse kinds of music that rarely meet on the classical stage.
Glissant spent his childhood in his native Martinique, then went on to study piano in Paris before attending Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1988, where he studied music production & engineering, composition, and conducting.
His influences include South American, Caribbean, and African music, as well as European classical music. This brought him to collaborate through the years with Philip Glass, Norah Jones, Bill Frisell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Vinicius Cantuaria, Pete Seeger, John Zorn, Tico da Costa, Thiago Thiago de Mello, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, and Yasmin Levy.
https://www.olivier-glissant.com/