Yarn/Wire mixes piano, percussion
With piano and percussion, Orlando’s Accidental Music Festival celebrates its fifth season at a performance Thursday by hot New York quartet Yarn/ Wire.
“The really exciting thing for me this year is it feels like there’s a new energy, a new life breathed into it,” says founder and program director Christopher Belt about the festival that highlights innovation in classical, jazz and avant-garde music. “This is the best lineup we’ve ever presented. The quality is so high.”
The New York Times proclaimed in a headline “Yarn/ Wire mesmerizes.” London’s Guardian newspaper has also lauded the group for “not only creating a new repertoire for their ensemble, but also questioning the boundaries of what that music might be.”
In the quartet are two percussionists, Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg, and two pianists, Laura Barger and Ning Yu.
“Yarn/Wire is dedicated to commissioning works by living composers,” says Greenberg, a founding member. “Each piece that we will be playing will be receiving its Orlando — if not Florida — premiere, and all of these pieces are brand-new.”
The concert will highlight New York-based composers, including Steve Reich and his new work “Quartet.” Joseph DiPonio, the Accidental Music Festival’s 2014-15 composer-inresidence, wrote “Chroma” specifically for Yarn/Wire.
Stars of the New York chamber-music scene, the composers “occupy a space on the music spectrum where the visceral and intellectual combine to create something you can appreciate at first listen, yet still return to over and over,” Belt says. “We’re excited to introduce them to Central Florida.”
Reich’s piece is scored for pianos and vibraphones. It is “one of the more complex I have composed,” writes the minimalist composer on his publisher’s website. “It frequently changes key and often breaks off continuity to pause or take up new material. Though the parts are not unduly difficult, it calls for a high level of ensemble virtuosity.”
At least one publication thinks Yarn/Wire is up to the task: Time Out New York labeled Yarn/Wire’s virtuosity nothing less than “spellbinding.”
“The group takes great care to make even the most challenging music approachable through
BOBBY FISHER Orlando’s Timucua Arts Foundation, will present Canadian pianist Vicky Chow in February. She’ll perform “Surface Image,” 70-minute electro-acoustic work by composer Tristan Perich that places Chow among an array of 40 speakers serving as an electronic orchestra.
Before that, the Ensemble AMF will debut with a December concert at Will’s Pub. Sitting in with the musicians will be Eric Jacobsen, new music director of the Orlando Philharmonic and big fan of new music.
“I emailed him and said, ‘Hey, this might sound crazy but do you want to perform with us?” Belt says. “He wrote back right away and said, ‘Let’s make it work.’“