The Bard College Music Program Presents
The Relâche Ensemble Performing Composer Kyle Gann’s The Planets

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Relâche Ensemble will perform composer Kyle Gann’s ten-movement suite, The Planets, with video by John Sanborn, on Thursday, September 13 at 8 p.m. in Bard College’s Olin Auditorium. Admission is free and open to the public and no reservations are required. For more information call 845-758-7250.

Like Gustav Holst’s Planets, the work is a musical expression of forces associated with the planets in astrology. As the music outlines a wide array of postminimalist processes, Sanborn’s video brings together Renaissance art, classic poetry, dancers, footage of outer space, and other natural and synthetic phenomena to sculpt nuanced narratives of the associations that humanity has formed with Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and other celestial bodies over the centuries.

John Sanborn is a video artist and director whose works have been shown at almost every major museum in the world, including the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Prado, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Gallery, London; and Seibu Museum, Tokyo. His video works have been broadcast worldwide, including 16 segments for PBS featuring works with Bill T. Jones, Philip Glass, Twyla Tharp, The Residents, and David Gordon. A dance work created for Great Performances, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and directed by Sanborn, won three Emmy Awards. Sanborn has directed over 30 music videos (including works with Nile Rodgers, Sammy Hagar, Philip Glass, Tangerine Dream, Grace Jones, King Crimson and Van Halen) and designed and directed dozens of commercials for clients such as Nintendo, Hitachi, Pioneer, and the Disney Channel.

Kyle Gann is a composer and was new-music critic for the Village Voice from 1986 to 2005. He is the author of five books on American music, and wrote the introduction to the 50th-anniversary edition of John Cage’s Silence. Gann studied composition with Ben Johnston, Morton Feldman, and Peter Gena. Of his hundred-plus works to date, about a fourth are microtonal, using up to 37 pitches per octave. He’s received commissions from the Orkest de Volharding, Indianapolis Symphonic Choir, Dessoff Choir, Relâche Ensemble, pianist Sarah Cahill, and many others. His music is available on the New Albion, New World, Cold Blue, Lovely Music, Mode, Meyer Media, Brilliant Classics, New Tone, and Monroe Street labels. In 2003, the American Music Center awarded Gann its Letter of Distinction. 

Relâche is a new music ensemble that for more than 30 years, has maintained an international reputation as a leader in commissioning and performing the innovative music of our time. Relâche has a unique sound making use of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, viola, piano, bass and percussion. It performs works that are neither classical nor popular but somewhere in between— a melding of Western classical traditions with jazz, rock, electronica, world music, and more. One of the oldest continuously operating, nonprofit organizations and chamber ensembles dedicated to contemporary music in the United States, with seven CDs to its credit, Relâche boasts a touring-ready repertoire of over 50 pieces and a repertory library of over 400 works. Nearly 200 of these are Relâche commissions, including works by Robert Ashley, Kitty Brazelton, John Cage, Uri Caine, Fred Frith, Kyle Gann, Philip Glass, Fred Ho, Michael Nyman, Pauline Oliveros, Bobby Previte, George Russell, Somei Satoh, and Lois V Vierk, just to name a few.

ge’s Olin Auditorium. Admission is free and open to the public and no reservations are required. For more information call 845-758-7250.

This event was last updated on 09-07-2012

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