Playing With Restriction
08.09.2022
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg (Texas)
This programme explores restriction to playfully shift how a pianist engages with her instrument(s) and performance. The pieces deliberately restrict particular aspects of a piece of piano music, forcing the pianist to adjust and forge new dynamics of movement. She engages with her instrument; her technique; her control of notated sounds; her sense of a complete piece; her sense of her own sound. Despite this creating precarious, even ‘incompletable’ music, the overall attitude is curious; attempts become a game, even a dare.
This programme orientates around two pieces collaboratively composed with me, one of which was the project’s point-of-launch: Monica Pearce’s Studies in Restriction. These five studies draw out different aspects of the pianist’s technique, particularly aspects that are lesser-lingered-on in traditional music. Through collaboration, Pearce located these and ‘played with’ them to create short etudes of attention, care and negotiation. Michele Abondano’s One is Too Few transforms a pianist’s sound, as she understands it, and brings forth the lesser-heard nuances of the piano’s timbre. It aims to create a visceral, enriched version of her sound as she plays but that shifts her engagement with it, and restricting her habitual response to it.
Programme:
PROLOGUE: Barcarolle Clio Montrey
studies in restriction* Monica Pearce
study in independence
Formation Maya Verlaak
studies in restriction Monica Pearce
study in stretch
Withinan Rebecca Saunders
boxmusic Lauren Redhead
Intermission
One Is Too Few** Michele Abondano
studies in restriction Monica Pearce
study in practice
Fuga Interna (begin) Katharine Norman
Layers Nomi Epstein
studies in restriction Monica Pearce
study in suspension
study in 3-2-1
EPILOGUE: Merry Christmas Mrs. Whiting Bunita Marcus
*US premiere
**World premiere
Special thanks to the Center for Latin American Arts, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Music, White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Photography: samwaltonphotography.com