We’re excited to report that UB graduate composer Robert Phillips will be traveling to Freiburg, Germany, next month to have a piece
premiered on the 20th anniversary concert of Ensemble SurPlus. Ensemble SurPlus
have been friends of the Center for 21st Century Music and the UB Department of
Music since they first performed at June in Buffalo in 2005, and we’ve been
fortunate to have them back frequently throughout the years. The University at Buffalo was blessed to
have the founder of Ensemble SurPlus, James Avery, on faculty teaching piano and conducting the UB Contemporary Ensemble here in 2007 and 2008, when he
brought a wizard-like sense of musical energy to all of the projects he guided
and participated in. Since James Avery’s passing in 2009, Ensemble SurPlus has continued to be one of the most dedicated contemporary music ensembles around
today, generously devoting time to working with composers, both old and young, and adding
pieces to their repertoire after learning them at June in Buffalo or other conferences and festivals, and bringing new music and virtuosic performances to places all
around the globe, including, recently, Ecuador, Korea, U.S.A., and Indonesia.
A little more on Ensemble SurPlus from their website:
Ensemble SurPlus at Niagara Falls |
“Ensemble SurPlus was founded in 1992 by the eminent pianist
and conductor James Avery (1937-2009). The Ensemble performs chamber music
ranging from duos to large instrumental combinations. Its primary objective is
to give new or unknown works an optimal performance, regardless of
compositional style or technical and intellectual demands. After its formation
in 1992 the ensemble was invited in the same year to perform at the
International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt. In 1993 it was engaged
to give the first performance of a contemporary chamber opera at the Archipel
Festival in Geneva, which received enthusiastic critical acclaim. Since that
time it has gained increasing recognition on the international scene for
contemporary music and has been a frequent guest at festivals throughout Europe
(Musica Viva, mehr!klang, Donaueschingen) Asia and North America (June in
Buffalo, Stanford University, University of Victoria). In addition to
performing in traditional concert settings, SurPlus also welcomes experimental
projects, improvisation and Music Theater. A close cooperation with Akademie
Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart has existed since 1994. Most recently the
Ensemble has collaborated in the project “New Music Network” funded by the
German Ministry of Culture, working with young people in the German school
system in order to educate a young public about new music. The ensemble has
also collaborated closely with the Experimental Studio of the German Radio
(SWR). Numerous CD productions and recordings (Ferneyhough, Clark, Spahlinger,
Mahnkopf, Wolpe with Heinz Holliger) document the great versatility of the
ensemble. The ensemble is based in Freiburg, Germany.”
Robert Phillips photo by Megan Metté |
We asked Robert Phillips to talk a little about his upcoming piece on
the Ensemble SurPlus 20th anniversary concert, “I am greatly looking forward to
the 20th anniversary concert of Ensemble SurPlus on Saturday, December 8th, at
the E-Werk Freiburg. They asked me to compose what they referred to as a
‘conceptual’ piece for them, which would involve all 13 players on stage and
could be performed without a conductor. Having worked with SurPlus extensively
in the past, I knew this project would be a great opportunity to work closely
with a large cast of some of the world’s best musicians to workshop and
experiment with new musical ideas, extremely flexible frameworks for
interpretation, diverse interpretation strategies, and to forego the ordinary
start-to-finish through-composing that is my usual method of operation. The
piece is titled O Haupt voll Blut und
Wunden, and is a collection of performance guidelines to work through five
J.S. Bach chorales, with each player being given separate indications to
interpret, alter, augment, distort, and otherwise navigate through their
specific SATB voice-leading designation of the J.S. Bach chorales.
“The concert will be one exclusively of world premieres,
with all of the pieces having been written for and commissioned by Ensemble
SurPlus. Also on the program will be Yonsei
(2010), by Dieter Mack, and Hommage à
Daniel Libeskind Vol.II (2010/11), by Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf – two German
composers I have been following closely for a while now. I’m really looking
forward to being around so many excellent musicians, composers, and musical
thinkers.”
Phillips provided an excerpt from the program note:
“In O Haupt voll Blut
und Wunden, written for and dedicated to Ensemble SurPlus on their 20th
anniversary, the players are given performance directions and interpretation
strategies to work through five J.S. Bach chorales. Each player navigates
through one of the four individual Soprano, Alto, Tenor, or Bass contrapuntal
lines of the chorales, and each of their lines have been augmented, distorted,
expanded, and given indications to extend expressivity through a wide variety
of performance techniques – all while the players read from the same four-voice
SATB Bach chorale.
“To further intensify and complicate matters, there is no
conductor, and each player is given a flexible, uncoordinated tempo to work
through, only occasionally taking cues from the pianist or violinist. In this
way, the antiquated Baroque rhythmic grid of the Bach chorales has been
rendered fluid and unpredictable, with each contrapuntal voice rising and
falling as waves of interpretive virility and spontaneity flow through each of
them; transforming them into liquid, as if cast over water.”
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