With Simon Steen-Anderson, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Beyond This Point
Join Chicago-based groups Ensemble Dal Niente and Beyond This Point for a collaborative performance of Berlin-based Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen's
Black Box Music -- an experience that is part installation, part music composition, and part multimedia spectacle.
In
Black Box Music, the soloist’s instrument functions like a miniaturized black box “puppet” theater with a camera projecting the image inside the box to fill one wall of the performance space. The soloist’s hands play the primary role of “conducting” the 15-member ensemble, which surrounds the audience on 3 sides. The soloist utilizes hand gestures and an array of objects inside the box to interact with the ensemble, including rubber bands attached to the floor and ceiling, a small fan with a string attached, a collection of tuning forks, and a balloon. This one-of-a-kind composition debuted in 2012, and the Chicago performance will be its first in North America.
Ensemble Dal Niente will also present the Chicago premiere of Michelle Lou’s new work for chamber ensemble and electronics.
This program is presented in partnership with the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry and the Goethe-Institut Chicago.
Performers and Ensembles
Simon Steen-Andersen (born 1976 in Denmark) is a Berlin-based composer working with a multidisciplinary approach to musical performance and concerts, resulting in works situated between the categories of music, performance, theatre, choreography, and film. Simon Steen-Andersen has received numerous prizes, including the Kunstpreis from Berlin Academy of the Arts 2013, the 1st Prize of International Rostrum of Composers, the DAAD Berlin Artist Residency 2010, and the Kranichsteiner Music Award 2008. He has been a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts since 2016 and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music since 2018.
Ensemble Dal Niente performs new and experimental music with dedication, virtuosity, and an exploratory spirit. Dal Niente produces an uncommonly broad range of contemporary music, guiding listeners towards work that is transformative, that subverts expectations, and that represents multiple compositional ideas and identities.
Beyond This Point is an exploratory collaboration seeking to investigate resonances and intersections across several practices including theater, movement, media/film, non-traditional musical forms, sculpture, text, and installations both static and performative.
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