Music Beyond the Walls. Iannis Xenakis. Persephassa (1969)

Date

Place

Skatepark, Gorky Park

Description

Iannis Xenakis is one of the leading composers of the 20th century, along with John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Bulez.  In addition to composing music, Xenakis was a mathematician and an architect. He worked in Le Corbusier’s architectural studio where they jointly designed the famous Philips Pavilion for Expo-58 in Brussels. Xenakis’s composition method places a special focus on space, its acoustic properties and its use in the context of musical perception. 

Persephassa is a piece for six percussionists. Performers are positioned at the points of hexahedron surrounding the audience, thus providing listeners with a unique acoustic experience. 

Performed by Andrey Vinnitsky, Dmitry Vlasik, Andrey Doinikov, Grigory Durnovo, Mikhail Komarov and Ignaty Matyukhov 

This is the first performance in Russia of Persephassa.

Free entry, but seating is limited. The event begins at 20:30.

Music Beyond the Walls

Concert program, as part of the Garage educational platform 

June - September 2012 

This program will follow the history of music throughout the 20th and 21st centuries ending with the anniversary of composer John Cage’s birth on 5 September. Simultaneously, the program will follow the spatial experiments of composers who chose to work outside of the set conditions of concert halls and model the environments of their music pieces independently, acting as both composer and architect. All music pieces are performed outdoors. 

Written by: Dmitry Vlasik