This Thursday, I'll be talking onstage at Miller Theatre with composer Jason Eckardt and poet Laura Mullen, who have collaborated on Eckardt's Undersong, a cycle of four works ending with the world premiere of the distance (this), completed in 2008. Vocalist Tony Arnold and Ensemble 21 will be joined by David Fedele (flute) and Christopher Finckel (cello), all conducted by James Baker.
Eckardt is one of a number of composers in the "new complexity" movement, characterized by a fascination with often densely layered textures which (needless to say) sometimes present harrowing difficulties for the players to surmount. Get a feel for his idiom here. He and Mullen met at the MacDowell Colony, where she shared a draft of the poem that would ultimately find its place at the end of Eckardt's cycle. Her work is often startlingly visual, with words and punctuation marks (not to mention parenthetical expressions) rigorously arranged, in elegant dialogue with the printed page itself.
[Photo: Jason Eckardt from kleinefenn@ifrance.com]
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