Ensemble Dal Niente Season Closes in Chicago on June 10

Source: Ensemble Dal Niente.

Dal Niente Closes 2022 season with (mini) Party at Holtschneider Performance Center

June 10, 2022 @ 7pm
Allen Hall, Holtschneider Performance Center
2330 N. Halsted Street

CHICAGO: Dal Niente’s annual party has taken many forms over the years, but always features a fascinating range of music and a fluid format. In many of the works featured at this year’s party, musicians will curate their own performances, deciding which notes to play and when; and audience members will find themselves listening deeply and co-creating musical landscapes.

This year’s Party features some small instruments, small instrumentations, and small scores that expand into big pieces. In Roscoe Mitchell’s Cards, performers trace their own musical paths through a deconstructed score. In Lei Liang’s Trans, the audience forms “sonic clouds” by playing pairs of rocks, in response to cues from soloist Kyle Flens. Dal Niente will play the concluding movement of Sarah Nemtsov’s Zimmer cycle, which the composer conceives as “a living organism, breathing, pulsating – with the objective (utopia) of creating a kind of polydimensional structure.” Hunter Brown’s The Niente Files, written for Dal Niente + Ken Vandermark and premiered this past March at the Big Ears Festival, invites musicians to improvise in response to each other according to an agreed-upon framework. And in inti figgis-vizueta’s modular, collage-like, “follow-the-leader” scores, “the focus on a single, shared, and consecutively performed line integrates an ethic of whole over parts and of independent exploration and self-actualizing.”

Program
Roscoe Mitchell | Cards
Lei Liang | Trans for percussionist and audience
Sarah Nemtsov | Zimmer IV
Marco Roberts | Trio
inti figgis-vizueta | Openwork, knotted object / Trellis in bloom / Lightning ache
Hunter Brown | The Niente Files

Performed by:
Constance Volk, Flute
Hanna Hurwitz, Violin
Zach Good, Clarinet
Juan Horie, Cello
Mabel Kwan, Piano
Ben Melsky, Harp
Kyle Flens, Percussion
Hunter Brown, Electronics
Michael Lewanski, Conductor