Bang on a Can

BANG ON A CAN ALL-STARS with special guest IVA BITTOVÁ
The 2008 People’s Commissioning Fund (PCF) Concert
Wednesday, February 13, at 8pm

New York’s unparalleled electric chamber ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars returns to Merkin for the 2008 People’s Commissioning Fund concert. Three world premieres commissioned by the people! The All-Stars premiere work by two up-and-coming New York composers Tristan Perich and Ken Thomson and Turkish electroacoustic composer Erdem Helvaciaglu; then welcome avant-gypsy-folk singer-violinist Iva Bittová from the Czech Republic for a rare NY performance of their riveting live collaboration.

With a palette as wide-ranging as audio-sculpture, electronica, punk-jazz-fusion, eastern European experimental folk and more set upon the virtuoso musicians of Bang on a Can, this promises to be a very special evening.

The PCF is a radical partnership between artists and audiences to commission works from adventurous composers.

A special edition of WNYC’s New Sounds® Live will broadcast the event.
John Schaefer, host

About the Composers:

Tristan Perich, New York-based composer and artist, works with simple forms and structures, inspired by the aesthetics of math and physics. His über-low-tech 1-Bit Music (Cantaloupe Music, 2007) probes the foundations of digital sound. Recent electroacoustic compositions for ensemble and 1-bit sound integrate the physical with the electronic.

Erdem Helvacioglu is an electroacoustic composer from Turkey. He has received numerous electronic music awards and his album “A Walk Through the Bazaar” (out on Locustmusic) was called “outstanding” by Wired Magazine. Helvacioglu’s music has been performed across the world at various music festivals and exhibitions. He is currently working on his PHD in electroacoustic composition at Istanbul Technical University.

Ken Thomson, Brooklyn-based clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer, plays saxophone and writes for the NY-based punk/jazz band Gutbucket, with whom he has toured internationally and released 3 CDs on Cantaloupe Music. As a composer, in 2007 he finished a new 22-minute original soundtrack for Gutbucket to accompany the film "Night Mail" which was called "a masterful re-imagining of an old classic" by Indiewire.com. He is currently finishing his new work, "Wait Your Turn," a commission from the American Composers Orchestra, debuting October 19 at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. He is a founding board member of Anti-Social Music and regularly performs with So Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, the World/Inferno Friendship Society, No Net Trio, Bang on a Can and others.

About the Compositions

Ken Thomson wrote seasonal.disorder while spending the winter in Leipzig, Germany. "The days were short," Thomson recalled, "The sun never brought more than a cold gray light that faded by 4pm" He recalls the aging canals, the scent of coal from smokestacks, and Leipzigers huddled together drinking hot spiced wine under the lights of the Christmas market. Hearing news of political violence in Kenya and Pakistan, as well as the hotly contested elections back home, Thomson's work reflects feeling "trapped in the middle of multiple global struggles that I could only observe from a distance�. I considered whether this was what society had imagined for us even 10 years ago. It seemed to me that this was not simply a temporary state of the world's mind."

The Turkish composer Erdem Helvacioglu says he finds the inspiration for his work in "ambiguity, lost times and unknown places." In his research of American history, Helvacioglu became fascinated with Native American languages, and particularly the Abenaki language, which he found to phonetically resemble his mother tongue. The title of his new piece Lossada Taka translates as "let's go there" in Abenaki, a language spoken by several thousand Abenaki people in New England and Quebec. "The words 'lossada taka' initiated the main concept of the piece," Helvacioglu said. "They filled me up with sounds from the past and led me into the future."

Tristan Perich's new work All Possible Paths, for five channels of 1-bit electronic music and six live instrumentalists, plays on the relationship between the physical and the electronic. "Physical things have electronic properties, and electronics have a certain physicality to them," Perich says, "especially for example when you start to look at the ground level of electrons moving along paths of least resistance. 1-Bit Music is about this lowest level, where sound is electrical information at its most basic form." In All Possible Path, Perich uses geometric principals to balance these electronic sounds with live performers. "It is as if there are two simultaneous geometries on the stage, one of the human musicians and all the lines of sight and sound and energy that they bring, and one in this electronic domain of simple forms and straight-forward trajectories."