Present Music presents
In the Key of Now
Mabel Kwan, piano
Saturday, September 19, 2020 | 7:30 pm CDT
Present Music Digital Stage
Program
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Scape (2011)
Ann Cleare: where cobalt waves live (2017)
Igor Santos: (ghosts) behind articulation (2018)
Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh: Radius (2017)
Trevor Bača: Mráz (2017)
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Reminiscence (2017)
Present Music’s 2020-2021 Season, Limitless, is made possible with generous support from the United Performing Arts Fund, the sponsorship of Saint John’s on the Lake, and grants from the Milwaukee Arts Board and the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.
About the artist
Pianist Mabel Kwan performs classical and experimental music. She is fascinated by sounds, contradictions, and our perception of what is familiar or strange.
A founding member of Ensemble Dal Niente, Mabel champions the music of living composers and has performed in festivals and universities throughout North America, South America, and Europe. She regularly tours the U.S. with improvised music group Restroy, synthesizer duo Mega Laverne and Shirley, and electronic/instrumental trio Uluuul. Mabel volunteers for TECHNE, an organization that works with women and girls to build electronic instruments and improvise using music technology.
Since 2009 Mabel has lived in Chicago. She is a 2020 City of Chicago Esteemed Artist, 2018 High Concept Labs Artist, and 2017 3Arts Awardee. A native of Austin, Texas, Mabel received piano performance degrees from Rice University and Northern Illinois University. She enjoys running, eating, and camping with friends and family.
About the music
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Scape (2011)
After Anna Thorvaldsdottir's instructions on how to prepare some of the strings of the piano with screws (to create the sound of a “fantasy music box”) and how to scrape and pluck some of the other strings with paperclips and thimbles, she includes the following unusual indication...
"Atmosphere: Ideally, the performance space is dark and lights are placed inside the piano — so that the inside of the piano is reflected on the inside of the lid of the instrument and the performer’s shadow is cast on the walls of the performance space."
It’s not always possible to realize these lighting specifications, but the effect is already there in the music itself, whose dark, shadowy undulations set off a detailed and gleaming vision of the piano’s refracted interior.
Ann Cleare: where cobalt waves live (2017)
where cobalt waves live treats the entire register of the piano as if it were a vast ocean of fluidity and force. Wave-type figures are distinguished by their unique rhythmic patterns and registral timbres, and their motions can nestle, curl, and crest within each other or co-exist independently. The exploration of the piece through these wave-types lead toward, what is thought of as, a state of rich cobalt-blue water, hidden deep within this pianistic ocean
Igor Santos: (ghosts) behind articulation (2018)
All three movements of (ghosts) behind articulation are dedicated to the manipulation of piano resonances. The first movement deals with repeated objects and changing echoes, the second addresses malleability and written-out coloring of resonances, and the final movement reverses the logic of the opening by sustaining a single object under rapidly changing music.
Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh: Radius (2017)
Radius focuses on the idea of intersecting radiuses from a single source point. Centering around the presence of the pianist, the axes here are presented in forms of pitch relationships, degrees or resonances, the aural and physical spaces within which dialogues are formed in the presentation of these trajectories. In navigating between the delicate fluidity of corporeality and the activation of sound, the piano becomes an instrument of extensions: of the self, the past, the familiar and the uncertainties, venturing through a status of continual renewing.
Trevor Bača: Mráz (2017)
Under stone, under feather, around the edges of fruit bristles ice in its tracings until morning. So small but so bright it is the crystals in night that give to the frost its serrations. What tracks are these that back-tread to dreams in grains that arise and enjamb?
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Reminiscence (2017)
Reminiscence is written in 7 short movements that are performed in a seamless flow from one movement to the next. Ghostly sustained glissandos and deep resonating sounds merge with passages of calm and fluidity, briefly holding on to a moment of reflection, before letting go and moving away.