Talujon Percussion Ensemble performs Gérard Grisey’s “Le Noir d’Étoile” at UB this week!

The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music is looking forward to hosting the Talujon Percussion Ensemble at UB this week for a day of student composer readings and an exciting concert of contemporary percussion music. The New York Times has described Talujon as possessing an “edgy, unflagging energy,” whose “brilliant members” are skilled at producing “frenzied explosions of percussion madness…” Talujon joins us as they wind down their 20^th Anniversary Season with residencies at UB and Brandeis University, as well as a tour of concerts given throughout New York, including at the Manhattan School of Music, Purchase, Brooklyn’s Roulette, and venues all around NYC.

Talujon Percussion Ensemble

On Monday, April 23, at 1:00 p.m. in Lippes Hall the Talujon Percussion Ensemble will read works from five graduate composers in the music composition program at UB, which features an incredibly diverse and original body of composers, with a wide range of aesthetic attitudes and outlooks. The pieces at the workshop include nor nothing towards obstruction or else erasure yet and, by Colin Tucker, Four in the Morning, End of December, by Dan Bassin, Emergence, by David Rappenecker, …in other news, by Dimitar Pentchev, and Detrimento Temporal no. 1 (febrero), by Juan Colón-Hernández.

One of the composers, Colin Tucker, features some rather unconventional percussion instruments in his piece, as he explains in this excerpt from the program notes, “In nor nothing towards obstruction or else erasure yet and, two percussionists scrape surfaces – familiar instruments (drumhead, almglocken) and construction materials (flakeboard, cardboard) – with cardboard and other implements. The score specifies the performers’ efforts in moving implements around surfaces, rather than the sounds that result. “Effort” involves two parameters: pressure directed parallel to the surface, wherein bodily energy produces sound, and pressure directed perpendicular to the surface, wherein bodily energy impedes sound. The latter is therefore a “switch” which mediates the former’s latent energy, cancelling it or allowing it to actualize itself into motion and sound.” More information about Colin and his unique approaches to composition can be found at his website here.

Gérard Grisey

On Tuesday, April 24^th, at 7:30 p.m., Talujon will present a concert in Lippes Hall featuring Le Noir de L'Étoile by famed French composer Gérard Grisey. Le Noir de L'Étoile concerns the death of a pulsar – a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. The piece had its genesis when Gérard Grisey was teaching at the University at Berkeley in 1985 and met the astronomer and cosmologist Joe Silk, who introduced the composer to the sounds of the Vela Pulsar, which Grisey incorporated and translated into the piece. The percussionists of Talujon will be stationed around the hall to provide an enveloping sonic experience and communicate live the pulsations and vibrations of the Vela Pulsar.

Check out the video below of an excerpt of Talujon performing Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together.