Seventh Annual Midsummer New Music Festival
$20 donation or sliding scale
Includes meal
4:00 PM “Eight Fractured Folk Songs”
Joseph Zitt, voice and Katherine Setar, piano
5:00 PM Screening of Music is the Air I Breathe
70 min. documentary on Cathy Berberian
6:30 PM Festive Pot Luck Dinner
7:30 PM The Cornelius Cardew Choir offers a set
of performance poetry
Meridian Music: Composers in Performance and the Armenian Film Festival
present Meridian Gallery’s Seventh Annual Midsummer New Music Festival,
which will focus on avant-garde/experimental vocal music and performance
poetry. The evening will feature a screening of the Dutch filmmaker
Carrie de Swaan’s 1994 documentary, Music is the Air I Breathe.
Eight Fractured Folk Songs for Voice and Piano (2004-2005) blends the
talents of composer/singer/poet Joseph Zitt with those of
composer/pianist/music theorist Katherine Setar. The songs are, in
effect, acoustic remixes of existing folk or public domain songs which
were inspired by such diverse influences as contemporary mash-up
recordings, John Cale's reworking of "Heartbreak Hotel," Karlheinz
Stockhausen's electronic and acoustic "moment form" works, and the “Deep
Listening” work of Pauline Oliveros. Setar and Zitt have created a
different method of improvising for each song, starting with its text
and musical elements and creating new musical languages that bring out
its most emotionally involving and musically intriguing elements. Eight
Fractured Folk Songs for Voice and Piano explores a wide range of both
musical methodologies and emotional ranges. Among the many settings of
songs, Zitt and Setar have also included “Black is the Color of my True
Love’s Hair,” a folk song also set by composer Luciano Berio for his
wife, Cathy Berberian.
Music is the Air I Breathe, written and directed by Carrie de Swaan,
documents the life and work of the noted new music vocalist, Cathy
Berberian (1925-1983). The 'Callas of the avant-garde', as Berberian was
called, played an important role in the development of vocal music in
the 1950s and 1960s, breaking down vocal taboos and developing new ways
to use the voice. Her unique abilities inspired such composers as John
Cage and Luciano Berio and many others to write music for her. Cathy
Berberian renewed the traditional recital with her feeling for theater
and her sense of humor, causing quite a sensation among the audience.
Her many-sided repertoire ranged from Monteverdi to contemporary music,
including her own composition 'Stripsody', based on sounds from comic
strips.
The film is composed of archive fragments of her art over a period of 25
years, of personal letters, home movies and interviews with musicians,
friends and family, like Louis Andriessen, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Luciano
Berio and Cristina Berio. This is the second San Francisco screening of
the film, the first being at the San Francisco Armenian Film Festival in
2004. It runs 70 minutes in length.
The Cornelius Cardew Choir will present a set of performance poetry,
performing pieces largely by members of the choir. The Cardew Choir is a
large vocal performance ensemble based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The choir is an exciting intersection of community and experimental
music brought together by singing.
The evening will also include a festive pot luck dinner, with food
donated by La Mediterranee (2936 College Ave., Berkeley).
This concert is funded in part through Meet the Composer’s Creative
Connections Program with the support of ASCAP Foundation, Copland Fund,
Ford Foundation, Virgil Thomson Foundation, and the National Endowment
for the Arts. The Gallery and its programs are supported in part by
Grants for the Arts of the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.