It is no secret that the new music community has found a vital home in New York City in recent years. The creative minds behind what is known as "contemporary classical music" are innumerable, and gaining prespective can be an overwhelming task for audiences.
Beginning on October 14, however, the SONiC Festival (Sounds of a New Century) ventures to make sense of the scene-particularly as it pertains to composers under the age of 40-with a 9-day festival in New York featuring a staggering 100-plus composers and more than 17 word premiere performances of newly commissioned works.
I spoke with composer Du Yun, a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) who will present her work Vicissitudes Alone for guitar and electronics, featuring guitarist Daniel Lippel of ICE, at The Kitchen on Thursday, October 20 at 8 p.m.
Daniel J. Kushner: How does Vicissitudes Alone relate to your previous work?
Du Yun: This is actually a small, solo cadenza section of a larger ensemble work which is called Vicissitudes No. 1. [That work] has this middle section where the guitar comes by itself, so [audiences will hear] the guitar solo from that bigger piece.
DK: Vicissitude means a sudden misfortune or change.
DY: To me, it means the flow and ebb of changing events in life. That was always something really interesting to me. I often feel like life has so many events. Things happen -- one event makes a big change. But at the same time, we're still us. So I'm trying to investigate that kind of relationship between lots of changes while some things still stay the same.
DK: So you do that compositionally?
DY: Yes, especially for that serious piece. The beginning of that piece is very much about big changes, bursts. The guitar is not even included in the ensemble until a third of the way in -- the guitarist walks up to the stage to do the solo. So the idea is that one event happens to another event, but somehow for the audience it has to be very organic -- "Oh, of course it's to be there" -- even though compositionally, structurally, it might not be that this pitch relates to that pitch.
DK: So in the full piece with the cadenza included, the guitarist comes onstage in the middle of the performance? Why did you choose to do that?
DY: Well, because it's a very dramatic moment. And in a lot of Japanese theater and Chinese operas we have characters that you've never seen before. And all the sudden, they come up, but it changes the events surrounding it.
DK: So it's sort of like the Vicissitude within the Vicissitudes. How would you characterize this October 20 performance within the context of your ongoing relationship with ICE?
DY: I started at the end of college -- I went to Oberlin -- so I know most of the people from those college years. And as we grew up, and I wrote more and ICE got bigger too. In a way, you grow up together. They have played my music so many times, so they really understand my vocabulary, my musical sensibilities. When they see my music in a score, they already know what kind of sound I want... It's an inherent understanding.
DK: Vicissitudes Alone, like much of your other work, utilizes electronics. What is it about electronics in general that you find particularly compelling?
DY: It's not really coming from the '60s modernist way of using electronics, and it's not really spectral. I'm a very textural composer. I care a lot about textures and gestures. Electronics add so much to that. It's like a flavor -- it creates so much texture.
For more information about the SONiC Festival, visit the official SONiC Festival website.
This interview has been cross-posted at You're So Post-Post-Rock Right Now.