When pianist Keith Kirchoff and flutist Solomiya Moroz met at the Banff Centre for the Arts in winter 2009, they immediately noticed similarities in their passion to perform and promote challenging contemporary repertoire. Individually, they are each successful performers and composers who have performed both in North America and Europe with programs that integrate electronics into live performance. They began collaborating as a duo in the summer of 2010 at the Omi International Music residency in upstate New York, when they coincidentally were in residence simultaneously. This chance meeting sparked inevitable curiosity to continue the collaboration and express multi-faceted aspects of each other’s musical personality in contemporary repertoire, creation of new repertoire with electronics, and composing music for their own duo.

Paysages Ephémères is based on Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities; it is centered on five cities from the book: Valdrada, Eudoxia, Leonia, Melania and Olinda.

Paysages Ephémères is a collaboration between Solomiya Moroz (direction and music composition), Julien-Robert Legault Salvail (live video), Marc Genya St-Arnaud (choreographer) and Maxime Boisvert (photography).
 
Research into different types of experimentation with video, music and dance is at the center of Paysages Ephémères. The product of our experimentation is a combination of Calvino’s stories, created music score, video images and choreography, musicians’ and dancers’ improvisations, various video and music processing (MAX/MSP, jitter, ableton live), together they yield a singular vision as realized in Paysages Ephémères.

 The musical score is for 5 musicians (flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, percussion) with some electronic sound processing. The music is closely linked with interactive video, which also reacts to dancers’ movements (music and dance influence and trigger certain cues in the video).

There is an improvised aspect to the presentation where music and dance as well as interactive video have space for variation during the performance.

Through this project we hope to show elements of social urban life which verge on many themes: invisibility, desire, memory, artificiality, displacement, fantasy, trade, fragility, etc. much like the titles of stories in Invisible Cities i.e ‘Cities and Desire’, ‘Cities and Memory’, ‘Hidden Cities’, etc.

 
territoires inexplorés est une nouvelle série de musique contemporaine fondée par Xenia Pestova et Solomiya Moroz qui vise à présenter le répertoire musical inexploré ou rarement joué des 20ème et 21ème siècles. Il regroupe plusieurs musiciens d'horizons différents et encourage la collaboration entre les différents médias et disciplines artistiques.

 
We propose a multidisciplinary concert with music, dance, lighting and staging. The concert is titled Hommage à Scelsi. The program consists of composed pieces by Giacinto Scelsi, intercalated with improvisations inspired by Scelsi’s compositions. The dancer takes certain gestures of Scelsi’s compositions and interprets them in his choreography, as well as dances in the improvisations. A lighting technician is needed to facilitate the staging points of the performance.

 The program is organized in a circular manner between two mouvements of duo Kho-Lo with central pieces: Piccola Suite, Hyxos, and Collective Improvisation. At the end returning with Kho-Lo like at the beginning. This program is chosen based on Scelsi’s signature, which is a simple circle with a line underneath.

 We have already presented a “work in progress” for a small audience, seen in the sound unedited demo DVD submitted. This first production helped us to understand the further steps to take in order to fully realize this project. We hope to present this project in an appropriate venue to a larger audience.

The production is a 55 minute long continuous presentation, with various staging points throughout the show. Because the staging is in diverse sections of the performance space, the audience is invited to choose from a variety of comfortable seating areas.

We have chosen pieces for small instrumental duo groups of flute and clarinet (Piccola Suite, Ko-Lho), alto flute and percussion (Hyxos), solo instrumental pieces (Ixor, Quays, Tre Studi), and arrangements of Krishna e Rhada for vibraphone, flute and bass clarinet. The improvisations are solo, duo, trio, and collective alternating with composed works.

 Scelsi was a unique composer of the Italian Post-World War II period. His music did not follow the forms and classifications of his period, but was often generated through improvisations. He considered himself a ‘messenger’ not a composer. His works could be classified as periods based on the years of his creative output.

Participants :
Solomiya Moroz, Flutes
Krista Martynes, Clarinets
Charles Duquette, Percussion
Jonathan Turcotte, Dance
Tehnician, Lighting