Music of Today: Ostravská banda in Ireland
Music of Today, part 1
Friday | October 11, 2024, 13:10–15:00
Aula Maxima, University College Cork (map)
FREE ADMISSION
Martin Smolka: Oh, My Admired C-Minor (2002)
Donnchadh MacAodha: Music for Flute and a Two Handed Pianist (2023)
Petr Kotik: Many Many Women Plus I (1975–78, 2024 version)
Phill Niblock: Petr's Charm (2021)
Music of Today, part 2
Sunday | October 13, 2024, 15:00–21:00
The Guesthouse, Cork (map)
FREE ADMISSION
Karen Power: Bats of Namibia (2020)
Luboš Mrkvička: Quartet, Part A (2019)
Jonathan Nangle: Granular Dusk (2022)
Danny McCarthy: xxxxii (2010)
Isabel Mundry: Balancen (2006)
Morton Feldman: Structures for string quartet (1951)
Rudolf Komorous: Olympia (1964)
Christian Wolff: Flutist & Percussionist 1 (2003)
Danny McCarthy: Five Leave Falling
John Godfrey: Bus Piece
George Brecht: Drip Music (1959)
Petr Kotik: Many Many Women Plus II (1975–78, 2024 version)
Pauline Oliveros: From Unknown Silences (1996)
♣︎ The concert in the Guesthouse will be divided into several parts and will be accompanied by a screening of documentaries and recordings from the events of the Ostrava New Music Centre.
Program subject to change.
Performers
Ostravská banda, international chamber orchestra
Petr Kotík, conductor (New York / Ostrava)
+ special guests:
Irena Troupová, soprano (Prague)
John Godfrey, electric guitar (Cork)
Susan Stenger, flute (London)
Alex Petcu, percussion (Cork)
Yseult Cooper Stockdale, violoncello (Cork)
Music and ideas that originated during the 1950s in New York – in works by John Cage and his associates – influenced a whole generation of composers and musicians. Prague was one of the first places in Europe where it made an important impact, even though Czech Republic was an unlikely place for this to happen. An isolated country behind the Iron Curtain, where keeping in touch with anything that came from the West was very difficult and occasionally risky.
It happened in 1960, when Luigi Nono stopped in Prague on his way from the Warsaw Autumn festival and met with a few artists and musicians. He gave Petr Kotik the “Darmstädter Beiträge 1958” booklet, a publication documenting Darmstadt institute and festival. It featured transcripts of lectures by artists-in-residence of that year, texts by John Cage, Edgar Varèse, Christian Wolff and David Tudor. This writing, especially the lectures by Cage had a great impact on the music and art scene in Prague.
For some composers there, reading ideas that were coming from the New York School, was the start of separating themselves from the rigid Darmstadt-style European new music. They inspired the local avant-garde scene in composing and performing in a new way, making music differently than what was has been heard all over Europe. In Prague, a significant series of concerts were organized by Petr Kotik and Rudolf Komorous. Their repertoire included works by, among others, Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman, La Monte Young, Kurt Schwertsik, their own compositions, and by a number of composers form Europe (East and West) and America.
When John Cage visited Prague in 1964, as part of the Merce Cunningham world tour, he spent an evening with Komorous and Kotik, listening to recordings of their music. He took a great deal of interest in the music and said “I am so surprised, I never heard anything like it anywhere.” It was the start of a collaboration between Kotik and Cage that lasted until Cage’s death in 1992. In 1964, Cage and Kotik performed together in Vienna, Prague and Warsaw.
Presenting music by Czech composers in the context of music from the U.S. and Europe follows the logic of this early period, seeing through a perspective of the past 60 years.
FOR MEDIA
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