voice & ensemble 

FACE

by Pierluigi Billone

 

22.Jan.2017 // 15:30
Berlin, Ultraschall festival

4.Dec.2016 // 18:00
Luxembourg, Festival Rainy Days
Philharmonie Luxembourg, Salle de Musique de Chambre

4.Nov.2016 // 19:30
Vienna, Wien Modern
Semperdepot

conductor

Leonhard Garms

Voice

Anna Clare Hauf

PHACE

Sylvie Lacroix , flute
Walter Seebacher, clarinet
Michael Krenn, saxophone
Yaron Deutsch, e-guitar
Mathilde Hoursiangou, piano
Berndt Thurner, percussion
Adam Weisman, percussion
Ivana Pristasova, viola
Roland Schueler, cello
Alexandra Dienz, double bass
Alex Liposwski, ad hoc player

The instrument in my hands is an unknown thing, totally mysterious and therefore motionless, still without a voice. The body and the thing must find their balance yet, must be reconciled. In these experiments, I have encountered what enables the production of vibrations, before something can be defined as sound/noise and therefore will be included in a musical dimension or excluded from it. And this happens even before the final mastering of a technique which covers these initial experiences…

PROGRAM

Pierluigi Billone

FACE for voice and ensemble (70′) (world premiere)

commissioned by Wien Modern and Philharmonie Luxembourg for PHACE

INTRODUCTION
Face
has a double meaning:  light/star in Old Italian, and its typical English meaning. Both expressions „Voice and ensemble“ and „Voice“ must be clarified. The Voice – in a general sense – appears in all parts in different ways and according to a particular hierarchy. It deals with a main vocal part (the female voice) with two vocal satellites (Flute, special performer).

The solo voice
has a rich, free and visionary part, with traces and accents of a pseudo old “Greece tragic voice”, a wide spectrum of spoken and sung moments, only inner vibrations, or instrumental like vibrations. The voice reaches its central moment of development by using only “vocal acts”: actions and gestures consisting of elemental body/voice acts of presence like “belly – impulses”, “throat violent noises and vibrations “and so on.

The special performer has a ritual and mysterious function as “mediator”. His unconventional instrumental/vocal actions mark and accompany the solo Voice with introductions, punctuations, commentaries, and so on, until the moment when the “mediator” takes the musical rule of the Solo Voice.

The Flute musician plays mainly a real vocal part (hidden and filtered by the flute), completely depending on the Solo Voice part.

The whole ensemble turns sometimes in a kind of speaking/singing consort. In some particular given contests appears a kind of “fossil” voice: vocal fragments on tape with a special rule (Quotations from J. Cage, H. Lachenmann, L. Nono, G. Scelsi, K.H. Stockhausen,).

Voice means here a real constellation open in all direction and senses. It appears everywhere and in any way, and its logic of appearance remains willingly enigmatic and unclear. The usual and traditional orientation, with its typical expressive/psychologic or mechanic/instrumental point of view, has here no place. The body sounds and vibrates.

Some vibrations have a surface (the word). That is also the reason why there is no real text, and when a vocal action has a spoken articulation, its meaning remains willingly completely hidden. The vocal actions occur here as starting body gestures, as autonomous act which only after lead to the word and the language. The “clearance” lies here before the word, and independent from the word. The traditional hierarchy has been turned back.

The body eventually chews, devours, drinks, spits, vomits or builds the word new. The body leaves the voice coming out or hiding, always starting from its emptiness, and remains always centred on its emptiness. The voice needs now these independence and free detachment from the language. Why? Because there is something more important and urgent, now……….

Pierluigi Billone

“Pierluigi Billone belongs to one of those rare magicians, who can suspend lineal time. One assumes with his music as if to enter a ritual space” (Heinz Rögl)
…his radical methods have led him to explore unchartered soundworlds and to develop idiosyncratic instrumental and vocal techniques. Nevertheless, the concurrent roots of these sources of inspirations lie in an archaic world – a sacred universum – where, as if for him, the most progressive standpoint of modernity would be when music itself reaches its own phenomenal essence.” (Philippe Albéra)

BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1960 in Italy, Pierluigi Billone lives in Vienna. 
He studied composition with Salvatore Sciarrino and Helmut Lachenmann.

Billone’s music has been performed by relevant interpreters in festivals such as Wien Modern, Festival d’Automne Paris, Donaueschinger Musiktagen, Wittener Tagen für neue Kammermusik, Eclat-Stuttgart, Ultraschall-Berlin, Musica Viva München, TFNM Zürich, Ars Musica Bruxelles, Huddersfield NMF, World Music Days Wroclaw, Biennale Zagreb, Boston, New York, Monday Ev. Concerts Los Angeles, Bendigo Festival Sidney.

His music has been regularly broadcasted from the most important radios (BBC, WDR, SDR, BRD, NDR, ORF, DRS, RCE, RF, NR) in and beyond Europe.

His works received international awards such as the Kompositionspreis der Stadt Stuttgart (Stuttgart 1993), the Busoni-Kompositionspreis (Academy of Arts Berlin 1996) the Wiener Internationaler Kompositionspreis (Vienna 2004), the Ernst-Krenek-Preis (Vienna 2006), and the Kompositionspreis der Ernst-von-Siemens-Musikstiftung (Munich 2010).

From 2006 to 2008 Pierluigi Billone has been guest professor for composition at the Music University Graz, in 2009 at the Music University of Frankfurt, and from 2010 until 2012 at the Music University Graz.

He is regularly invited as teacher and lecturer in composition courses such as: IEMA-Ensemble Modern Akademie 2008, Harvard University 2010, Columbia University NY 2010, MCME International Academy Russland 2011, Ferienkurse Darmstadt 2010, 2012, 2014, Impulse Akademie Graz 2011, 2013, 2015, Tzlil Meducan Israel 2011, 2014, 2015, MCIC Madrid 2015, 2016, Boston University 2015, New York University 2015, Composit-Rieti 2015, 2016.

The works of Pierluigi Billone appear on the Kairos, Stradivarius, Col-legno, Durian, EMSA and Ein_Klang labels.

Event Dates

November 2016
  • Date
    Project
    Location
  • 04.Nov.2016 19:30

    Billone - Face

    Wien, Festival WIEN MODERN - Semperdepot

    Face für Stimme und Ensemble - ein abendfüllendes Werk von Pierluigi Billone (UA).

    «der wildeste Billone aller Zeiten»

    Anna Clare Hauf, Stimme 
    Leonhard Garms, Dirigent

    „Billone gehört zu jenen seltenen Magiern, welche die lineare Zeit außer Kraft zu setzen im Stande sind. Man vermeint bei seiner Musik einen kultischen Raum zu betreten.“ (Heinz Rögl)

     

    Read more
December 2016
  • Date
    Project
    Location
  • 04.Dec.2016 18:00

    Billone - Face

    Philharmonie Luxembourg, Rainy Days

    Face für Stimme und Ensemble - ein abendfüllendes Werk von Pierluigi Billone (UA).

    «der wildeste Billone aller Zeiten»

    Anna Clare Hauf, Stimme 
    Leonhard Garms, Dirigent

    „Billone gehört zu jenen seltenen Magiern, welche die lineare Zeit außer Kraft zu setzen im Stande sind. Man vermeint bei seiner Musik einen kultischen Raum zu betreten.“ (Heinz Rögl)

     

    Read more
  • 05.Dec.2016 10:00

    CD-Aufnahme Billone

    Philharmonie Luxemburg

    Face für Stimme und Ensemble - ein abendfüllendes Werk von Pierluigi Billone (UA).

    «der wildeste Billone aller Zeiten»

    Anna Clare Hauf, Stimme 
    Leonhard Garms, Dirigent

    „Billone gehört zu jenen seltenen Magiern, welche die lineare Zeit außer Kraft zu setzen im Stande sind. Man vermeint bei seiner Musik einen kultischen Raum zu betreten.“ (Heinz Rögl)

     

    Read more
January 2017
  • Date
    Project
    Location
  • 22.Jan.2017 15:30

    Billone - Face

    Berlin, Ultraschall Berlin - Festival für neue Musik

    Face für Stimme und Ensemble - ein abendfüllendes Werk von Pierluigi Billone (UA).

    «der wildeste Billone aller Zeiten»

    Anna Clare Hauf, Stimme 
    Leonhard Garms, Dirigent

    „Billone gehört zu jenen seltenen Magiern, welche die lineare Zeit außer Kraft zu setzen im Stande sind. Man vermeint bei seiner Musik einen kultischen Raum zu betreten.“ (Heinz Rögl)

     

    Read more

 

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