After a great success in Korzo last December, Ensemble Modelo62 will present Ways of Seeing in Theatre De Nieuwe Regentes in The Hague on February 7th at 17:00, during the Sounds of Silence Festival for silent film and live music. Ways of Seeing is a program of four works by different composers where sight, next to listening, plays a substantial role not only for the audience, but also for the musicians, who at some point play blindfolded on a darkened stage. Before the concert, at 16:00, trumpet player and music composition PhD Justin Christensen, along with UvA profesor of Media Studies Patricia Pisters, will present lectures on ‘The Synesthesia of Sound and the Moving Image’.
Ensemble Modelo62 has a very exciting proposal in mind with this production: to enhance the concert experience by employing the power of sight. Sight as image and inspiration for sound, sight as accompaniment to hearing and sight as a raw sense. Four works, out of which three were commissioned by the ensemble, revolve around this concept.
Program
Richard Barrett: ‘Wake’ (for three instrumental trios, electronic sounds and lighting)
Martín Matalón: ‘Las siete vidas de un gato’ (for ensemble, electronics and film (Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí))
Thomas Bensdorp: ‘Dromenboek’ (for ensemble, electronics, narrator and Super 8 projectors)
Francisco López: ‘Untitled #335’ (for blindfolded ensemble)
Sunday 7th February 17:00
De Nieuwe Regentes, Weimarstraat 63, Den Haag
Tickets online from €10 here
Pre-concert talk 16:00 – free entry
With Wake, Richard Barrett (UK), transforms into sound his visual experience of a multi-layered painting by Roberto Mata, while on Dromenboek, Thomas Bensdorp (NL) sensitively mixes the ensemble with super 8 film projections inspired by the dreams that Dutch writer Frederik van Eeden recorded in his dream journals about the Dutch East Indies – a place Van Eeden never visited during his lifetime but dreamed about regularly. On Untitled #335 Francisco López chooses to eliminate seeing from his music, leaving the musicians alone with each other’s ears and listening: he blindfolds them, they follow no score, they rely on their sharp listening and their memory of carefully rehearsed aural cues. The program is completed with Las siete vidas de un gato (The seven lives of a cat) by Martin Matalón (ARG/FRA), a virtuosic piece for ensemble that is synchronised to the silent film Le chien andalous. More than just being music for a silent movie, the piece works as an electrifying musical counterpoint to the surrealist film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel.
Ways of Seeing
Sunday 7th February 17:00
De Nieuwe Regentes, Weimarstraat 63, Den Haag
Tickets online from €10 here
Pre-concert talk 16:00 – free entry
This project has been made with the financial support of Fonds Podiumkunsten and Gemeente Den Haag