HRSE SEASON ENSEMBLE: XENAKIS

Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble

Music -

Saturday 22nd April

7.30pm

£10 | £5

at Crescent Arts Centre



There are few better reasons for the existence of Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble than that they afford local audiences the ability to access utterly unique programmes.



In the past, accessing the music of Iannis Xenaxis in live performance almost certainly meant a journey to a major European city. This concert explores the music of this outstanding composer with performances of not one, but three of his works. Xenakis’ layering of rhythmic ratios and clusters of sound, trademarks of his approach, are evident in the opening sextet of this concert, Plektó. The ensemble are joined for this work by the conductor Sinéad Hayes and the percussionist Alex Petcu, who will also interpret Xenakis’ solo percussion work, Rebonds. The shocking originality and austerity of Xenakis’ duo for cello and piano, Paille in the Wind, completes this celebration of one of Europe’s most radical and significant composers of the late 20th Century.



Works by three local composers complete the concert, including Eduard Zatriqi’s War Games which was awarded 1st Prize at the First Peter Rosser Composition Award, a revised version of Greg Caffrey’s Garden of Earthly Delights, first performed by the ensemble last season as well as the UK premiere of Piers Hellawell’s Fictions, ending the concert and bringing our celebration of the composer’s 60th birthday year to a close.



As if this were not enough, Hard Rain are proud to present their 2016/17 Young Artist, the clarinetist William Curran, who will perform Elliot Carter’s solo clarinet work, Gra.