October is ALL about Berio! We welcome organizer/violist, Kristina Giles and the other performers to Pete's!
If you are wondering who the heck Luciano Berio is, you can read up on him here!
http://www.lucianoberio.org/en/node/1019
In a nutshell, the Sequenza's of Luciano Berio are a collection of colorful and often acrobatic works for various solo instruments. The composition of these have been spread out over the course of Berio's career. The earliest was written in 1958 and the most recent was composed in 2002. The Sequenza's explore the virtuosic and at times theatrical possibilities of the various instruments they are written for.
The Sequenza Project itself that will be performed at Pete's on October 11th and 25th came about as follows in the words of Kristina Giles....
The Sequenza Project has been an aspiration of mine since I first heard the pieces as an undergraduate conservatory student at Oberlin. The Viola Sequenza (no. VI) is the "Everest" of contemporary viola works. Few people attempt to learn it because of the endurance and months of preparation it demands. Of course, this just intrigued me more. As the piece is too exhausting to program with other solo works on the same performance, it makes much more sense to reunite it with the other fourteen sequenzas into a concert series.
Opportunities to hear all of the sequenzas together on a series is quite rare. These pieces have challenges for the instruments above and beyond mainstream contemporary works, and demand musicians of exceptional skill. The performances are not only displays of technical mastery, but in the Italian tradition from which composer Lucian Berio comes from, they are highly expressive, dramatic, and entertaining.
True masters of their art, the musicians you come from the highest ranks of the contemporary music scene. They will draw you into the dramatic, strange, lyrical, and even at times amusing, world of Berio's music. You will no doubt be entertained and intrigued by this one-of-a-kind show.
