Marco Fusi: Viewpoints

Violist/violinist and new music researcher Marco Fusi makes a welcome return to City with a programme of music for strings and electronics by North American composers, including the three members of Qubit (Aaron Einbond, David Bird and Alec Hall), the composers initiative founded in New York, and Berlin-based Canadian composer Chiyoko Szlavnics.

The programme explores divergent approaches to electronic sound, field recordings and interdisciplinary use of visual arts sources, centred around Fusi's charismatic virtuosity.

Please note, this event is free to attend, but seats are limited, so please sign up to attend, via the 'register now' button above.

Programme

• Aaron Einbond, Sonic Postcard: Grünewald, for viola and electronics (UK premiere)
• Alec Hall, there are only two ways to see inside someone, for violin and electronics, (world premiere)
• Aaron Einbond, Sonic Postcard: Sainte-Sulpice, for viola and electronics (UK premiere)
• Chiyoko Szlavnics, Structures in the Mind's Eye, for viola and sine tones (UK premiere)
• David Bird, dimvoid, for violin and electronics (UK premiere)

About Marco Fusi, Qubit and Chiyoko Szlavnics

Marco Fusi is a violinist/violist, a researcher in music performance, and a passionate advocate for the music of our time.
Among many collaborations with emerging and established composers, he has premiered works by Jessie Marino Giacinto Scelsi, Yu Kuwabara, Salvatore Sciarrino; he has performed with Pierre Boulez, Elena Schwarz, Lorin Maazel, Susanna Mälkki, Alan Gilbert, and frequently plays with leading contemporary ensembles including Klangforum Wien, MusikFabrik, Meitar Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, Ensemble Linea. Marco has recorded several solo albums, published by Kairos, Stradivarius, Col Legno, Da Vinci, Geiger Grammofon, New Focus Recordings.

Marco also plays viola d’amore, commissioning new pieces and collaborating with composers to promote and expand existing repertoire for the instrument.

After his Masters in Violin and Composition at the Conservatory of Milan, Marco’s received his PhD from the University of Antwerp, with a dissertation on the performance practice of Giacinto Scelsi’s works for string instruments. He is currently Professor of Violin at the Conservatory of Alessandria and Associate Researcher at the Orpheus Instituut of Gent.

Qubit (Alec Hall, Aaron Einbond and David Bird) is a multi-disciplinary artists’ initiative, producing works that examine significant cultural issues and the contemporary condition. In a syncretic performance practice that extend beyond the thresholds of traditional art forms, we produce performances and exhibitions that are both mobile and site-specific at the same time. With its emphasis on the creative use of technology, Qubit harnesses divergent modes of experimentation in music, sound, and visual aesthetics that speak to our collective situation. The flexible nature of the organization and its unique role in New York’s artistic geography enables Qubit to challenge established curatorial practices of time-based works and present experiences between artists and audiences which express the creative possibilities of the 21st century.

Chiyoko Szlavnics is a Canadian composer and visual artist, whose practice is based in Berlin.
She began composing after graduating from university music studies in Toronto in 1989, and studied privately with James Tenney from 1993-7. A generous Fellowship Grant from the Akademie Schloss Solitude took her to Germany in 1997, after which she moved to Berlin and joined its fertile international experimental music community. Chiyoko Szlavnics composes for acoustic instruments, and programs sinewaves, and sometimes combines the two. Around the year 2000, she developed a compositional approach based on self-generated drawings. The drawings enabled her to conceive and realise a kind of music, which promotes the perception of certain psychoacoustic phenomena (beating and combination tones), through her sensitive setting of ratio-related pitch material in sustains and extended glissandi, and her careful orchestration. Drawing became an independent artistic practice around the year 2010. She has created numerous "moire" series, which have been exhibited internationally. Beyond upcoming composition projects and further drawing series, Szlavnics also dreams of creating a new series of "sinewave sculptures". Szlavnics's compositions have been performed at venues great and small. Her preferred performance and installation venues are those with extraordinary resonance.