101

May 18 Monday 1pm
Knuth Hall Creative Arts Building
Admission: FREE

May 19 Tuesday 8pm
Berkeley Chamber Performances
Berkeley City Club
2315 Durant Avenue, Berkeley
Admission: $20 General

The relationship between numbers and music has long inspired many composers, from Bach to Wuorinen. ADORNO presents music imbued with the spirit of ratios, puzzles, fractal geometry, and other mathematic theory.

Nancarrow is best remembered for the pieces he wrote for the player piano. He was one of the first composers to use musical instruments as mechanical machines, making them play far beyond human performance ability. His music has a mathematical beauty and elegance that happily coexists with musical expressiveness and a puckish sense of humor. ADORNO features a transcription of one of his “player piano” works for ensemble. Charles Wuorinen’s work Eleven Short Pieces, uses exactly 101 notes and Tamar Diesendruck’s work is inspired by Sudoku puzzles. Iannis Xenakis’s algorithmic work, Morsima-Amorsima, was created with the use of a complex computer program for acoustical instruments.

PROGRAM:

Tamar Diesendruck Sudoku Variations for solo piano
Iannis Xenakis Morsima-Amorsima for violin, cello, bass and piano
Charles Wuorinen Eleven Short Pieces for Violin and Vibraphone
Charles Wuorinen Spinoff for violin, bass, and congas
Iannis Xenakis Rebonds for solo percussion
Conlon Nancarrow - Player Piano No. 34 arranged for String Trio

Program curated by Bill Everett
Note: May 18th concert is an abbreviated concert of the above program.

SF State Student Composers

Friday May 8th 8pm
SF State - Knuth Hall
Tickets: Admission: $10 general, $5 students & seniors

As part of our residency at SF State, ADORNO will perform selected works by SF State students.

Program:

TBA

Bang on a Door (no)

APRIL 24 8pm

Knuth Hall - San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Ave.
San Francisco

ADORNO pays tribute to New York’s renowned new music group “Bang on a Can”. Join us for “Bang on a Door(no)” with works by David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn, plus San Francisco’s own Dan Becker, Ryan Brown, and a premiere of a new work by Jonathan Russell.

“Bang on a Can” is an influential group of musicians/composers that began a signature movement in contemporary music, where they redefined new music on their own terms. The founders Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, fresh out of the Yale School of Music, arrived in New York City in the early 80’s, only to discover that the music world had been fractured into tiny, isolated communities, each with its own style and subgenre and venue and audience. Anyone who didn’t fit into one of these categories was faced with a seemingly insurmountable challenge. “Bang on a Can” was formed, first as a marathon concert and eventually as an ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, so that listeners could encounter a melding of categories: minimalism, rock, written and improvised music, world music, noise, live performance, and electronica. Read more

ADORNO at Switchboard

Be sure to catch ADORNO at the “Genre-defying” music fest on March 29th with Switchboard at the Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco. The group will join a star-studded line-up of artists including Pamela Z, Edmund Welles, Melody of China, and Paul Dresher.

For more information, visit:

Switchboard Music website

Post-Symposium
House Party

After the Symposium, join ADORNO in an intimate house concert on February 8th 3pm at the lovely home of Patty Page and Jeff Mogul in Menlo Park.

We’ll have lots of food and drink, and of course, some performances of selected works from the symposium as well as works from our past seasons. Read more

SF State Symposium Overview

Download detailed schedule here.

Elastic Band

ADORNO Gallery Sessions presents

Works by the Beatles, Stockhausen, Berio, Yoko Ono, and Friedman
January 16, 2008 7pm

at Cain Schulte Gallery
101 Townsend Street, Suite 207
San Francisco, CA 94107
Tel. 415.543.1550
Email. info@cainschulte.com

In 1966, Paul McCartney of the Beatles took time to explore the avant-garde scene and discovered the electronic music of Stockhausen and Berio. Later John Lennon (with influence from wife Yoko Ono) turned to these same avant-garde composers for such works as “Revolution No. 9″. This experimental approach was first heard on the Beatles’ early psychedelic-influenced track Tomorrow Never Knows, the final track of their 1966 studio album “Revolver”. The use of tape loops, electronically altered sound, as well as new recording techniques raised the bar in popular recording and opened new and exciting vistas of creative expression that are still reverberating today. Read more

Elektro/Acoustik

“Elektro/Acoustik”
Thursday October 23, 2008 8pm
Works by composers Mark Applebaum and Mason Bates
Knuth Hall - San Francisco State University
Admission: Free - Reception following the concert!

SFSU Composers Colloquium
October 21, 2008 Tuesday 2-4pm
Knuth Hall - SFSU
Admission: FREE

ADORNO Ensemble presents an “Elektro/Acoustik” concert celebrating Bay Area composers Mark Applebaum and Mason Bates. Read more