Sunday, September 23, 2012

FLORASONIC: Michael Thieke: Holzmusik

Florasonic is a unique program that commissions composers and artists to make new site-specific music and audio art installations for the Fern Room of the Lincoln Park Conservatory, a turn-of-the-century greenhouse. Curated by ESS Executive Director Lou Mallozzi, Florasonic presents each project for three to five months, visited by an estimated 500 to 1,000 people each day.

What you'll hear in the Fern Room this fall is Holzmusik (Woodmusic) by German composer and clarinetist Michael Thieke. The composition is made from many layers of recordings of the clarinet, and each recording uses microphones placed very close to the instrument to capture its most subtle and delicate sounds. Through this “microscopic” approach to sound, the two-foot tube of the clarinet is magnified and re-imagined in the large space of the Fern Room. The clarinet, made from African blackwood, is played by using the warm, moist airflow of the breath to vibrate a wooden reed; in a similar way, the Fern Room has a climate of warm, moist air to facilitate plant growth for its resident species. The title Holzmusik refers to Handel’s Water Music, which premiered in 1717, played on a large barge in the Thames River; and to T. C. Boyle’s novel Water Music, in which a clarinet and a microscope both make an appearance.

OPENING RECEPTION:

Sunday, 09.23.12, 3pm-5pm

FREE ADMISSION