Crash Ensemble Premiere Michael Gordon's 'Dry'

Michael Gordon

Crash Ensemble Premiere Michael Gordon's 'Dry'

Dublin’s Crash Ensemble will premiere a new work by the American composer Michael Gordon at the Kilkenny Arts Festival this week. The group’s performance at St Canice’s Cathedral on Friday, 16 August, will include Dry, which was commissioned by the Kilkenny Arts Council for the event. Donnacha Dennehy’s song cycle That the Night Come, featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw, and music by Nico Muhly will also be on the programme.

Dry is said to be a follow-on to Gordon’s 2012 work, Cold, which was written for the German group Ensemble Modern, and which earned a colourful description from the Frankfurter Neue Presse. ‘Micromotions accumulate into larger rhythmic forms, begin pulsing in ever changing colors, gain psychedelic volume, cool off, frost over, virtually shimmer an icy blue when figures, cut sharp and crisp like the marks left by the blades of ice skates, slide over the subtly swirling mass of sound,’ wrote the paper.

Listen to Cold here.

For a taste of Gordon’s music, you can also listen to For Madeleine below, the composer’s 2009 work for cello, double bass, clarinet, e-guitar, vibraphone and piano.

kilkennyarts.ie

Published on 15 August 2013

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