Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus – Liza Lim
Konsertti on osa Musica nova Helsinki -festivaalia.
Tiistaina 2.2.2021 klo 19:00
Videostream R-talon konserttisalista
Liza Lim: Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2017)
I Anthropogenic debris
II Retrograde inversion
III Autocorrect
IV Transmission
V Dawn Chorus
NYKY Ensemble
Augustas Gocentas, cello
Ezgi Göktürk, piano
Grace Tan, oboe
Arvid Larsson, bassoon and contrabassoon
Katja Lasser, trumpet
Touko Leinonen, percussion
Sakari Mäkimattila, trombone
Alexis Routley, horn
Aleksi Ruonavaara, double bass
Dain Song, flute and piccolo
Klaara Vasara, clarinet and bass clarinet
Yonatan Quemado, violin
David Claudio, conductor and coaching
Mikael Helasvuo, coaching
Olli Ovaskainen, sound engineer
Marko Myöhänen, sound engineer
Jukka Kolimaa, light designer
Janne Kivistö, assistant producer
Livia Schweizer, assistant producer
Anna Huuskonen, producer
Libero Mureddu, producer
Yle 1 Radio broadcast & audio in video stream:
Antti Snellman, sound designer
Matti Littunen, sound engineer
Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus
The work is commissioned for Klangforum Wien by Wittenertage für Neue Kammermusik & with the support of the APRA AMCOS Art Music Fund (Australia).
Dedicated to Ensemble Klangforum Wien
”Every aesthetic trace, every footprint of an object, sparkles with absence. Sensual
things are elegies to the disappearance of objects.”
Timothy Morton, Realist Magic
”The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings”
Herakleitos
Vast conglomerations of plastic trash circulate in five gyres in the world’s ocean currents and are ground into toxic fragments that sediment on remote islands and within the fish we eat. Our every-day rubbish shelters hermit crabs even as acid waters dissolve their former shell habitations. Albatrosses scoop up meals of plastic packaging to feed their chicks that then choke and starve as they ingest this colourful non-food.
Like this plastic waste, all time and its traces are with us still, albeit in residual and pulverised states. I have made a music out of heterogeneous relics of the past – a coarse sampling of ‘extinction events’ ranging from the spectral echoes of a creaking 19th century in piano music ‘on an overgrown path’ (Janáček), to a faulty transcription of a recording of the last mating call ever heard of the now extinct Kauai O’o bird, to tracings of a star map that captured the Chinese southern night sky in the 9th century. These time-traces rub against each other in ever- degraded cycles. Fleeting repetitions are pulsations of disappearance and point to the uncertainties of human memory and its collapse in abject forgetting.
There is broken grandeur and there are attempts to sing.
There is the uncanny dawn chorus of the fish-life that populates an endangered Australian coral reef.
Time breathes out an improbable hope.
– Liza Lim
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea?
Shakespeare, Sonnet No. 65
Liza Lim
Liza Lim is an Australian composer whose music focusses on collaborative and transcultural practices. Ideas of beauty, ecological connection and ritual transformation are ongoing concerns in her compositional work. Her four operas: The Oresteia (1993), Moon Spirit Feasting (2000), The Navigator (2007) and Tree of Codes (2016), and the major ensemble work Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2018) explore themes of desire, memory, and the uncanny. Widely commissioned by some of the world’s pre-eminent orchestras and ensembles, Lim is Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Her music is published by Casa Ricordi Berlin.
David Claudio
David Claudio was born in Lima, Peru. After finishing his Journalism career in 1995 with the highest honours, he obtained his Professional Clarinet Player Diploma from the National Conservatory of Music in 2003 with the highest qualifications. On April 2011 he graduated from the Sibelius Academy Orchestral Conducting program with the highest qualifications. His teachers were maestros Leif Segerstam, Atso Almila, Jorma Panula, Hannu Lintu, Mikko Franck, John Storgårds, Dmitri Slobodeniuk, Markus Lehtinen, Peter Larsen and Anssi Mattila. He has studied also in the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig under Ulrich Windfuhr.
He has conducted in Finland orchestras such as Tapiola Sinfonietta, Turku, Joensuu, Oulu, Lappeenranta, Kemi, Vaasa, Kirkkonummi, Hämeenlinna, Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Polytechnic Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki University Orchestra, Kälviä Summer Festival Orchestra, three times with Sigyn Sinfonietta, NYKY-Ensemble (during the Musica Nova Festival), and The Finnish Guards Wind Orchestra. Also, he has conducted the Westsächsische Symphonieorchester, Jena Philharmonic Orchestra and Hochschule “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Symphony Orchestra (Germany), National Symphony Orchestra and National Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra (Peru), Trondheim Symphony Orchestra and Bodø Sinfonietta (Norway), and twice the Figeac Festival Symphony Orchestra (France).
He is also a conducting guest teacher at the Sibelius Academy.
Mikael Helasvuo
Mikael Helasvuo got launched on a musical career on joining the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in 1973, later occupying the position of principal flute in the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra until 1988. He has travelled on many continents, performing chamber and solo repertoire and holding masterclasses and can regularly be heard in both contemporary and Baroque-Classical repertoire, the latter on period instruments. Discs by him have won awards in Finland and abroad. He has given the premiere world and Finnish performances of well over hundert works for the flute, in recognition of which the Society of Finnish Composers awarded him the Madetoja Prize in 1992. A former student of Juho Alvas, Frantisek Cech and Aurele Nicolet, he is Professor of wind instruments at the Sibelius Academy.
Musica nova Helsinki
Suomen suurin nykymusiikkifestivaali Musica nova Helsinki järjestetään joka toinen vuosi. Musica nova esittelee suomalaiselle yleisölle tuoreinta uutta musiikkia, ajankohtaisia kansainvälisiä säveltäjiä sekä nykymusiikin klassikoita.
Musica nova Helsinki is Finland’s largest contemporary music festival. Held biennially, it presents the very latest music, composers now making their mark internationally, and contemporary classics.
NYKY Ensemble
NYKY Ensemble on vuonna 2009 perustettu Taideyliopiston Sibelius-Akatemian nykymusiikkiyhtye, jonka taiteellisena johtajana toimii professori Tuija Hakkila. Säännöllisesti konsertoiva orkesteri toimii foorumina nykymusiikin projekteille ja tutustuttaa opiskelijoita nykymusiikin trendeihin. Yhtyeen kokoonpano riippuu kulloinkin esitettävistä teoksista. NYKY Ensemblea ovat ohjanneet muun muassa Heikki Nikula, Heini Kärkkäinen, Jouko Laivuori, Anssi Karttunen, Mikael Helasvuo, Jukka Savijoki, Eija Kankaanranta, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Anu Komsi, Ilmo Ranta, Max Savikangas, Tim Ferchen, Minna Pensola, Joonas Ahonen, defunensemble, Tuija Hakkila, Emil Holmström, Gavin Bryars, Veli Kujala, Kari Kriikku, Maria Puusaari, Mikko Raasakka, Juho Laitinen, Didier Pateau (EIC), ensemble recherche ja Jaan- Eik Tulve .
NYKY Ensemble, founded in 2009 at Sibelius Academy, part of the University of the Arts Helsinki, is a contemporary music group led by Professor Tuija Hakkila. The group performs regularly and acts as a forum for contemporary music projects and a window for students into contemporary music trends. The group’s composition changes along with the pieces they perform. NYKY Ensemble has been led by Heikki Nikula, Heini Kärkkäinen, Jouko Laivuori, Anssi Karttunen, Mikael Helasvuo, Jukka Savijoki, Eija Kankaanranta, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Anu Komsi, Ilmo Ranta, Max Savikangas, Tim Ferchen, Minna Pensola, Joonas Ahonen, defunensemble, Tuija Hakkila, Emil Holmström, Gavin Bryars, Veli Kujala, Kari Kriikku, Maria Puusaari, Mikko Raasakka, Juho Laitinen, Didier Pateau (EIC), ensemble recherche and Jaan- Eik Tulve.