Metropolis Ensemble presents and hosts a mini-series devoted to pianists at the vanguard of New York’s new music scene, curated in collaboration with pianist David Kaplan. The series features five maverick New York-based pianists with long associations with Metropolis Ensemble, sharing the stage with invited artists making their Metropolis Ensemble debuts.

Yamaha CF6 premium grand piano provided by Yamaha Artist Services New York.

with Conor Hanick and Imri Talgam

Piano Soundscapes

Conor Hanick and Imri Talgam craft an evening celebrating the piano as noise maker, extracting poetry from the most extreme sonic possibilities the instrument offers. Accompanied by a visual synthesizer, Morton Feldman’s Triadic Memories is the evening’s epic centerpiece, as a beguiling series of slowly-evolving images coordinate with the music in realtime.

Morton Feldman’s Triadic Memories (1981)

A sanctuary of musical illusions, Triadic Memories not only reconfigures our sense of direction and scale, but with its mysterious, ephemeral soundscapes asks us to reconsider time, evolution, and stasis. This performance will be accompanied by a visual synthesizer, projecting a beguiling series of slowly-evolving images that coordinate with the music in realtime.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstück X (1954/61)

A masterpiece of 20th century avant-garde, Klavierstück X abandons all traditional categories of form and sound resources with the juxtaposition of wildly contrasting sound resources and densities. Using gloves, the pianist executes cluster glissandi that provide a range of finely-nuanced noises, turning the acoustic piano sound into an almost electronic soundscape. Alongside the virtuosity and complexity of the work, Klavierstück X explores the long processes of the decay of sound, requiring the listeners to constantly adapt their listening to the unforeseeable alternation between sound states.

This challenge to perception gives the work its monumental character, akin to a cathedral; one tries to grasp it as a totality and falls for the beauty of individual details. At the same time, the piece is not in a limbo of static alteration of these two modes, not merely a collection of highly individualized, poetic moments. As the piece progresses, there is a growing tendency towards clarification, articulation and organization of the different sound materials and characters in a more regular way. This movement from chaos to order, which illuminates the wealth of details, is the mythical core of the piece: a process of genesis.

Doors open at 6:30pm.

Because of the generous support of our followers, Metropolis Ensemble is thrilled to offer our pop-up venue at 1 Rivington as a place for new projects and works of music to take shape, at little to no cost to our artists. Select artists are given the opportunity not only to share finished works, but to use this platform to craft ideas into tangible realities.