PROJECTS
The following ongoing artistic projects form the core of Architek’s repeat concertizing, complementing premiere projects. Each video link contains a piece or excerpt from the program.
CONNECTIVE TISSUE
Architek Percussion creates a new full-length touring program that highlights the intersection of art music, video, and aspects of popular culture. The program, “Connective Tissue”, weaves together folklore and nostalgia in a way that both foregrounds the role technology and digital culture play in our lives today and predicates itself on the fundamentally communal—and connective—nature of human interaction. Works by Canadians Eliot BRITTON, Myriam BOUCHER, and Nicole LIZÉE as well as Wojciech KILAR (Poland) and John PSATHAS (New Zealand) are augmented with video created principally by Myriam Boucher, leading audience members through a 70-minute audio-visual experience.
BLIPS AND BEATS
Featuring repertoire composed for or inspired by the drumset, Blips and Beats explores a world where rhythm is king. This program showcases works that groove in unconventional ways, exploiting the vast possibilities of four drumsets alongside one another. Experience the dramatic juxtaposition of grooves moving in different tempi, drummers shifting into and out of phase with each other, and the excitement of dense rhythmic counterpoint. Includes works by Taylor BROOK, Dennis DESANTIS, Andy PAPE, Julia WOLFE, Duncan SCHOUTEN, and Beavan FLANAGAN.
MARIMBA PLUS
This diverse program for mallet instruments draws its inspiration from video game music, mass transportation, flamenco music, electronica, the Russian choral tradition, and middle eastern music. Featuring repertoire from three continents, this program showcases subtle nuance not commonly associated with percussion playing, and highlights Architek’s skill as arrangers and composers in their own right. Includes works by Eliot BRITTON, Aurel HOLLO, Christos HATZIS, Ben DUINKER, Nico MUHLY, and John PSATHAS.
THE MEANING OF A FORMAT
In the Meaning of a Format, works by Eliot BRITTON and Adam BASANTA find novel and expressive ways to integrate recorded sound from varietal sources (Tin Pan Alley records, household appliances, and software such as Skype) with percussion instruments and consumer electronics (synthesizers, radios, vintage lamps, and hand-held drum machines). The resulting kaleidoscopic tapestry blurs the boundaries between human and machine, popular and avant-garde, timbre and pitch, and analog and digital. The music comprising this program has been recorded and released on the DAME/Ambiances Magnétiques and Centrediscs labels.
OBJECT PROJECT
The premise behind the concert's theme is simple: no traditional percussion instruments are used in any of the compositions. Instead, the performers utilize various household, quotidian, or custom-built objects combined with amplification, live electronics, and pre-recorded fixed electronics. The excitement behind developing and performing repertoire using objects in place of instruments lies in the creation of sound worlds not conceivable with traditional instruments. The core version of this program includes works by Fredrik GRAN, Gyrid Nordal KALDESTAD, and James O’CALLAGHAN, with other repertoire by Hanna HARTMAN and John CAGE as supplementary.
REMIXES (w/ Sarah Albu, Soprano)
The repertoire featured in the Remixes project asks a central question: what signifiers, connotations, and identifiers associated with everyday sounds—not necessarily sounds we might classify as musical—are retained when those sounds are decontextualized? Sample recordings of rhythmic patterns heard in everyday life, such as pulsation of an MRI machine, the periodic ticking and grunting of an old photocopier, and the irregular pulsation of an old air conditioning unit are analyzed and transcribed, and the rhythms that result from them are expanded into a work which unites percussion, consumer electronics such as synthesizers and drum machines, and vocals with processing. Featuring compositions by Architek Percussion, Sarah ALBU, Vitalija Glovackyte, Patrick HART, and Greg HARRISON.
