Alternativa

In a program containing no fewer than five Greek premieres, the Ergon Ensemble performs composers and works that transcend stylistic boundaries and popular preconceptions about contemporary forms of composition and performance.

The celebrated American musician John Zorn works in the grey zone between jazz-fusion and contemporary music. Tonight, he presents his take on the contemporary French aesthetic in “Bateau Ivre”, a work inspired by the symbolist poems of Arthur Rimbaud.

Michel van der Aa from the Netherlands, one of the leading composers of the upcoming generation and the winner of the Grawemeyer Award (2013), is the very epitome of a ‘multimedia’ composer. In “Transit”, video projection and a virtuosic piano performance are combined with pre-recorded and pre-processed sounds from a film directed by the composer.

The pioneering Meredith Monk from the US is a composer, singer, choreographer, director and creator of operas and music theater who has won a number of international awards for her wide-ranging contributions to the arts. In “Realm Variations”, Buddhist beliefs on the stages of reality provide the inspiration for an exchange on multiple levels between voices and instruments.

Britain’s Gavin Bryars started his career as a professional jazz musician and free improvisation pioneer but later make a name for himself as a composer of opera and chamber music, in which capacity he has worked with directors and choreographers including Robert Wilson, William Forsythe, Lucinda Childs, Jiri Kylián and Merce Cunnigham on a number of important collaborations. The emotionally-laden “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” takes a song sung by an anonymous homeless man in London in 1971 and processes it with powerful results (the work was also released in a version sung by Tom Waits).

Finally, the American Steve Reich, one of the most important composers of our times, is represented by one of his most recent —and most popular— works: “Radio Rewrite”, which was inspired by two Radiohead songs (“Jigsaw Falling into Place” and “Everything in its Right Place”).