Guest Artist Concert: Yarn/Wire

Acclaimed piano–percussion quartet Yarn/Wire performs new works by UW Composition doctoral student Yonatan Ron and faculty/alumnus Yiğit Kolat, as well as pieces by Klaus Lang and Steve Reich in an evening of adventurous contemporary music.

Program

Steve Reich - Quartet (2014)
Klaus Lang - molten trees (2017)
Commissioned by Yarn/Wire
Yonatan Ron - TBA
Yiğit Kolat - JUS4QIX

Program Notes

Steve Reich – Quartet (2013)
Quartet, when mentioned in the context of concert music, is generally assumed to
mean string quartet. In my case, the quartet that has played a central role in many
of my pieces (besides the string quartet) is that of two pianos and two percussion.
It appears like that or in expanded form with more pianos or more percussion in
The Desert Music, Sextet, Three Movements, The Four Sections, The Cave, Dance
Patterns, Three Tales, You Are (Variations), Variations for Vibes, Pianos and
Strings, Daniel Variations, Double Sextet, and Radio Rewrite. In Quartet, there is
just this group alone: two vibes and two pianos.
The piece is one of the more complex I have composed. It frequently changes key
and often breaks off continuity to pause or take up new material. Though the parts
are not unduly difficult, it calls for a high level of ensemble virtuosity.
The form is one familiar throughout history: fast, slow, fast, played without pause.
The slow movement introduces harmonies not usually found in my music. The
piece is dedicated to Colin Currie, a percussionist who has broken the mold by
maintaining his solo career with orchestras and recitals and also, quite amazingly,
by founding the Colin Currie Group which plays whatever ensemble music he
believes in. I salute him and hope others will take note.
Quartet was co-commissioned by Southbank Centre, Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard
School, Cité de la musique, and Kölner Philharmonie / KölnMusik, and is
approximately 17 minutes in duration.
—Steve Reich

Klaus Lang - from “Freedom. Time. Politics."
”I am trying to compose music which turns sound into time made audible. I think that thisis only possible when sound is just sound because only then it is perceivable as that which it really is: a temporal phenomenon, audible time.But again at this point yet another seemingly paradoxical discontinuity shows:When we enter through listening a state of pure presence, in which music becomes pure duration, we are leaving temporality. When time becomes pure presence it dissolves. Through listening, time becomes eternity.

Yiğit Kolat - JUS4QIX
JUS4QIX is an homage to the Commodore 64 aesthetic. Almost every synthetic sound and image in the piece ties back to Commodore 64 hardware and software. An important part of my memories of this machine involved an element of the unexpected and the uncanny. Where I grew up, games came on bootleg cassettes and often misbehaved: they would freeze, crash, spit out glitchy sprites and noises. Even the loading process itself was full of chaotic visuals. This work is, in a sense, a revisit to the quirky sensations those games created.

The piece features a custom implementation of the arcade classic Qix, with the ensemble providing some kind of incidental music. Readily infected with glitches, the game falls apart as the piece progresses. Through the machine’s stalls and hard resets, the musical narrative finds itself a—

[V. O. — interrupting the program notes]

There must be more to this than nostalgia, or being just for kicks. Perhaps it has to do with the core idea of the game: as you carve away the surface, you ask yourself if there is a secret hidden behind it. “Yes, there is,” the game tells you, “but I won’t tell you what it is.” Ideas like that never age, and that’s why so many clones of Qix popped up, come to think of it. If there was a certain thing in common among all of them, it was the appeal to the urge to uncover an enigma.

But there are always forces that resist to the unraveling. As a matter of fact, those forces are often victorious—not because they permanently conceal what is there, but because the ones who get a glimpse of it become complacent. They—

[suddenly cuts back into program notes]

—and, timbral distances between the instrumental forces are thus reflected in the formal construction.

Biographies

Yarn/Wire

Yarn/Wire is a new music quartet dedicated to the promotion of creative, meaningful live musical experiences in the United States and abroad. Yarn/Wire achieves this by supporting composers and audiences through live performances, educational activities, and large-scale collaborative projects. Our artistic programming is driven by the desire to present music that reflects the full spectrum of our community at the highest level.