German Premiere of Juliana Hodkinson’s New Concerto for Electric Guitar
6th April 2016
Photo © Dries Alkemade
As in much of Juliana Hodkinson’s music, the composer explores the traditional limits of music: everything, including the electric guitar, is being modified. ”The strings of the solo electric guitar are re-rigged and massively detuned and re-tuned, to achieve an extremely noisy and low bass register, as well as to create meandering microtonal bends and slides. The music, and even the instruments, are under modification the whole time”, the composer writes.
Embedded in the score are headlines from the months when the composer was working on the piece, sonified in the music according to Morse code or converted through other compositional devices. These initiatives “create a relation between current events, their representations in media and communications, and the material aspects of a musical work”. The title comes from Hodkinson’s chamber opera Turbulence where the words are spoken by a pilot.
can modify completely / in this case / not that it will make any difference … for solo electric guitar and orchestra, was written for Aart Strootman and the Danish National Chamber Orchestra on the occasion of the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Award.
Concert details:
April 24 2016 | Saalbau Witten, Germany