Press Release
Press Room Registration
October 04, 2012
U.S. Premiere of "Friday Farewell" Added to Stockhausen Concert at White Light Festival
LCPA Press
October 4, 2012
Contact: Eileen McMahon, 212-875-5391
U.S. PREMIERE OF STOCKHAUSEN’S FRIDAY FAREWELL ADDED TO ALL-STOCKHAUSEN
WHITE LIGHT FESTIVAL CONCERT, OCTOBER 30, IN ALICE TULLY HALL
Friday Greeting and Friday Farewell Soundscapes in Alice Tully Hall Lobby Bookend
Concert That Features Cosmic Pulses and Heaven’s Door, a New York Premiere Performed on a 700-Pound Door
The audience arriving for the all-Stockhausen concert on October 30 at the White Light Festival will be bathed in orange light (per the composer’s instructions) in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall, where they will hear the N.Y. premiere of the composer’s Friday Greeting. At the end of the evening, the orange glow returns for the U.S. premiere of the composer’s Friday Farewell. Both electronic works will be performed by sound projectionist Joe Drew of Analog Arts.
For the concert inside the Starr Theater, percussionist Stuart Gerber will perform Heaven’s Door, and Joe Drew will project Cosmic Pulses. A 700-pound door designed and built to the composer’s specifications by D.J. Betsill, a luthier based in Georgia, will be transported from Georgia to Alice Tully Hall for this New York premiere performance. Heaven’s Door was written for Stuart Gerber, and he is the only person who has performed it to date. The door designed by Betsill responds to Stockhausen's conception that the instrument “resembles an old church door.” The door’s 12 hanging panels, custom-made of different types of wood, reflect a luthier’s touch, employing a method used to create a marimba. Betsill made the door for Gerber for the 2007 U.S. premiere of the work at Spoleto Festival USA.
Friday Greeting and Friday Farewell are from the opera Friday, the fifth opera of Light, the cycle of seven operas written for each day of the week by Karlheinz Stockhausen, the trailblazing composer renowned for his pioneering work in electronic music who influenced pop musicians from the Beatles to Björk. The slow-moving, ambient drones of Friday Greeting and Friday Farewell represent a mediation between spiritual realities and the physical world. In Friday Farewell, completed in 1994, Stockhausen referenced techno records by Aphex Twin, Plasticman, Scanner and Daniel Pemberton, artists to whom he had been introduced by The Wire magazine. Stockhausen’s German publisher sent Joe Drew the Friday Farewell tapes several weeks ago.
When he finished Light in 2003, Stockhausen began Sound, a cycle of music for the 24 hours of the day. He died of a heart attack before he could compose the final three hours of the cycle. Sound centers on what becomes of a spirit when it leaves the body, and in Heaven’s Door (the fourth hour of the cycle), the spirit encounters a door, a door to Heaven which is firmly shut. The traveling spirit must beat all manner of patterns on the wooden panels, exhausting himself in the process. Finally, without warning, the door yields, and the spirit can pass through to the other side.
White Light Festival is sponsored by Time Warner Inc.
Stockhausen premiered Cosmic Pulses, the 13th hour of Sound, just seven months before his death. It is the last piece of electronic music that he ever wrote. The music, which only contains loops of a solo synthesizer melody, swirls around the audience in an eight-channel maelstrom. There are 24 simultaneous layers of the melody, each moving at a different speed and trajectory through the sound system.
The whirling confusion of Cosmic Pulses is analogous to the sounds which emanate from behind Heaven’s Door once it has been opened. Instead of harps and choirs and stereotypically pleasant music, Stockhausen summons a cascade of cymbals and gongs, as well as a piercing siren. He said that he “wanted to show that Heaven is not all ice cream.”
Two significant Stockhausen performances have taken place this year. In June, Music Director Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic performed Gruppen (Groups) for three orchestras in two sold-out concerts in the Park Avenue Armory. In August, the London 2012 Festival thrilled the music world by presenting the world premiere of his six hour opera, Wednesday, from Light.
Analog Arts is an ensemble and production company with a track record of highly eclectic projects. Established in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2004, Analog’s portfolio includes a new music festival (ARTSaha!) and a composition contest (Iron Composer). http://analogarts.org/
Hailed by The New York Times for his “consummate virtuosity,” Stuart Gerber is an expert in the works of Stockhausen and an active performer of new music, working with notable composers such as Steve Reich, Kaija Saariaho, and John Luther Adams. He has performed extensively throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia and Mexico. Gerber is an Assistant Professor of Percussion at Georgia State University, the founder of the Atlanta-based new music group Bent Frequency and a frequent extra percussionist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. www.stuartgerberpercussion.com
Joe Drew is a doctoral fellow at New York University and a specialist in the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. His career as a trumpeter has taken him on tours with rock bands like Cursive, as well as ensembles like musikFabrik. As a director of Analog Arts, he has mounted an eclectic range of projects, including his 24-hour solo performance of John Cage's Aslsp, a retrospective of Samuel Beckett's short plays, and an adaptation of Rameau's Les fêtes d'Hébé. Drew is also the director of the Iron Composer competition.
Tickets starting at $25 are available by calling CenterCharge, 212-721-6500, online at www.WhiteLightFestival.org, or at the Alice Tully and Avery Fisher Hall Box Offices, 65th Street and Broadway.
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White Light Festival is sponsored by Time Warner Inc.
Additional support provided by The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc.
Endowment support provided by the American Express Cultural Preservation Fund
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Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presenter of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. A presenter of more than 3,000 free and ticketed events, performances, tours, and educational activities annually, LCPA’s series include American Songbook, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, Mostly Mozart Festival, White Light Festival, and the Emmy Award-winning Live From Lincoln Center. As manager of the Lincoln Center campus, LCPA provides support and services for the Lincoln Center complex and the 11 resident organizations. In addition, LCPA is leading a series of major capital projects, now nearly complete, on behalf of the resident organizations across the campus.
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Tuesday, October 30, 2012 at 7:30
Alice Tully Hall, 65th Street and Broadway
Pre-concert performance at 6:45, Alice Tully Hall Lobby (Morgan Stanley Lobby)
Stockhausen: Friday Greeting (New York premiere)
Cosmic Pulses
Starr Theater, Alice Tully Hall
Analog Arts
Stuart Gerber, percussion
Joe Drew, sound projection
All-Stockhausen program
Heaven’s Door (New York premiere)
Cosmic Pulses
Post-concert performance, Alice Tully Hall Lobby (Morgan Stanley Lobby)
Stockhausen: Friday Farewell (U.S. premiere)
White Light Lounge at outer Alice Tully Hall lobby
Tickets starting at $25 are available by calling CenterCharge, 212-721-6500, online at www.WhiteLightFestival.org, or at the Alice Tully and Avery Fisher Hall Box Offices, 65th Street and Broadway.
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