Rebecca Saunders: Myriad III

Rebecca Saunders envelops the performers of no less than seven different compositions within a billowing acoustic ambiance. They do not simply play for an audience which provides only occasional and easily ignored disturbing noises, such as the shuffling of feet and unsuccessfully suppressed coughing. Here, up to 2,464 music boxes can be put in motion. A concert installation within a concert installation. Notes are projected into the space, melodic loops superimposing, whirling and merging in polyphonic webs of sound. At any given point, there may only be a fragile cloud of the metallic clanging of song fragments, then this may be supplanted by manifest clusters. A sonic mist, intensifying and lightening at irregular intervals, into which the performers draw contours like tracers in fog. The pieces form a collage with the surrounding sound of the space, they interfere, interact, compete… Do they merge in it? Are they drowned by it? That depends on your standpoint, within time and space.

Supported by Kunststiftung NRW