Thursday September 12 * 8pm * $10 * TICKETS
Bonnie Lander & Batya Macadam Somer
Bonnie Lander (soprano) and Batya Macadam-Somer (violin) are classically trained musicians who specialize in collaborative new chamber music. After meeting in 2011 at the UC San Diego graduate program, Batya and Bonnie have been collaborating on a variety of projects including new chamber music, folk music, original music, and improvised performance. For this concert Batya and Bonnie will be presenting excerpts from György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments, as well as music by Los Angeles-based composer Carolyn Chen.
About “Kafka Fragments”: Composed in the 1980’s by Hungarian composer György Kurtág, Kafka Fragments is a concert-length chamber piece for voice and violin comprised 40 miniature works that each set a different fragment of text from Franz Kafka’s journals and letters. These miniatures are juxtaposed into a collage of short, absurd, dark witted, humorous impressions lasting between 3 seconds to 5 minutes long, and grouped into four different “Books,” presented like Acts in a play. The music in Kafka Fragments condenses the intense emotional experience of each fragment into a potent exaggeration of its expressive meaning. While there is no linear narrative to this work, these in depth explorations of text and music join together to create an intimate, confrontational, lively, and otherworldly theatrical experience that embodies Kafka’s personal writings.
Owen Gardner
guitar, cello
Owen Gardner's work in composition and improvisation is informed by his involvement in Baltimore's musical underground and by his studies in early music and ethnomusicology, aiding in the development of an ever-widening sonic and emotional language. Toward this end, he has worked almost exclusively in Just Intonation, applied primarily to 'cello and modified electric guitar, since 2006. He has been a member of the Red Room Collective since 2009. Owen has worked in a wide variety of collaborative contexts, having been a founding member of Horse Lords, Black Vatican and Teeth Mountain and performing and/or recording with Matmos, Dan Deacon, DJ Dog Dick and Future Islands, among others