The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center presents Ensemble Dal Niente in a program anchored by two parallel works: Hexis and Mnemosis, which invite the audience to improvise their listening experience amidst a wild array of loops, squeals, moans, and delicate, crystalline textures. Apply your improvising ears to the strange murmurs of Erin Gee’s Segment of the Fourth Letter. Listen to one of Christian Wolff’s famous exercises, which have been characterized by  Frederick Rzewski as “weird little tunes, sounding as if they had been beamed at some remote point in the universe and then bounced back again as a kind of intergalactic mutant music.” Individual instruments are highlighted in smaller duets, including the fragile multiphonics of Wang Lu’s harp and clarinet duet; Sandra Lemus-Hernández’s urgent duo for flute and clarinet, and Her Disappearance by Bethany Younge and Kayleigh Butcher, in which two voices are extended and transformed by PVC pipe.

Program:

George Lewis: Hexis (flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, cello, conductor)
Sandra Lemus-Hernández: II (flute, clarinet)
Erin Gee: Segment of the Fourth Letter (bass flute, clarinet, percussion, viola, cello)
Wang Lu: After Some Remarks by CW (clarinet, harp)
Christian Wolff: Exercise 18 (open instrumentation)
Igor Santos: anima (harp, percussion)
George Lewis: Mnemosis (flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello, conductor)