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Works on Paper: MALEDETTO by KENNETH GABURO, performed by Evergreen Experimental Music Ensemble
May 20, 2023 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Free – $20Works on Paper: Experiments in Language and Sound
presents
EVERGREEN EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC ENSEMBLE
in a performance of
MALEDETTO
by KENNETH GABURO
Saturday, May 20
7:30 pm (doors open at 7:00)
No late entry
1801 NW Upshur, Suite 660
503-388-7665
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Works on Paper is excited to present the Evergreen Experimental Music Ensemble in Kenneth Gaburo’s linguistic-musical tour de force Maledetto.==============================
Kenneth Gaburo’s Maledetto, a landmark work of experimental music from the composer’s LINGUA project, exemplifies Gaburo’s practice of Compositional Linguistics (i.e., language as music, and music as language). Arun Chandra, who has led multiple performances of the work over the years and serves as musical director for the Evergreen Experimental Music Ensemble, provides the following analysis:
Maledetto: for Seven Virtuoso Voices by Kenneth Gaburo (1926-1993) is a 1-hour “opera” for seven individual voices that interact with one another in quartets, quintets, duos, solos, and trios — in brief, it is an orgy for voices, which delivers a deep resistance to rationality while proposing a path to a different way of speaking.
The word “screw” is taken for a ride, with all its potential meanings and (powerful) subtleties. The tongues of the seven performers lick you through sound. The rationality of speech is delivered through the sensuality of sounds, and sounds carry with them the irrational rationality of meaning.
At all moments, the listener is assaulted by either the words or the phonemes — the decision is left up to the listener which one to follow now. Gaburo has created an acoustic ocean, in which meaning and phonemes rub against one another, leading to a climax that promises — something else. Something away from the insistence of the rational or the seduction of the sensual. No promises are given, but a door is pointed at.
Thus, Maledetto is a composition, a work of art, positing a path to the still not yet realized.
— Arun Chandra, Musical Director, Evergreen Experimental Music Ensemble
Performers:
Speaker A: Ben Michaelis
Speaker B: Ben Kapp
Speaker C: Shannon Kerrigan, Allen Burgess, Arun Chandra, Callum McKean
Speaker D: Emma Jones
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Upcoming at Passages Bookshop:
Fri 5/26 Works on Paper: Nico Vassilakis & mARKO WHENs
Sun 5/28 Spare Room reading series: Maryrose Larkin & Sam Lohmann
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