Sunday
June 4, 2022
Nature | Human
7:30 PM Central Time
St. James Cathedral | 65 E Huron St, Chicago
A critique of the human impact on the natural world, a melding of the classical-music artform with unconventional musical objects, and a celebration of our environment. Featuring Beyond This Point percussion collective.
*CCO requires all in-person attendees 5 and over to provide proof of fully-vaccinated status to attend. Attendees will need to bring a photo ID and proof of vaccination to enter. Masks strongly encouraged.
Tickets will also be sold at the door. Join us for a pre-concert talk at 6:45pm. Doors open at 6:30pm.
A live-stream option is available on YouTube! Suggested donation of $15 per person can be made here.
Out of a respect for renewable energy and a commitment to creating a new, better reality, composer Viet Cuong devotes his percussion quartet concerto, Re(New)al, to finding unexpected ways to breathe new life into traditional ideas. Alongside the orchestra’s traditional instruments, percussionists perform on “found” instruments, including crystal glasses and air cans.
In a CCO co-commissioned world premiere, a new work from Canadian/Icelandic composer Fjóla Evans creates a “texturing fog.” Evans’s work explores the visceral physicality of sound while drawing inspiration from patterns of natural phenomena.
Nature | Human features two commissions from CCO’s Ten x Ten project, co-presented with Homeroom Chicago and Spudnik Press. Ten x Ten pairs composers with visual artists, challenging each pair to co-conceptualize their work across media, stretching and expanding their creative processes. Ten x Ten world premieres:
In The Eyes of All Future Generations, composer Brian Baxter uses musical time and pattern to reflect on how the effects of climate change will reverberate, impacting future generations. Artist Katherine Lampert explores time and patterns through her print Echo, based on the patterns from a Baculites fossil. The fossil’s patterns, which mark the different chambers, “are not only beautiful but remind us of the physicality and fragility of life.”
As an homage to the trees of central Mexico, artist Rodrigo Lara Zendejas presents us with four sound sculptures. Using these sculptures, composer Luis Fernando Amaya derives every musical sound for cosa verde para descansar los ojos. Percussionists perform on the sculptures themselves, in conversation with the orchestra, “where the cello and the mesquite tree sculpture meet, interact with each other, and speak to each other.”
About the Soloists:
Beyond This Point percussion collective is an exploratory collaboration seeking to investigate resonances and intersections across several practices including theater, movement, media/film, non-traditional musical forms, sculpture, text, and installations both static and performative.