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Sospeso appears with legendary French conductor/composer
Pierre Boulez
at Carnegie Hall’s new Zankel Hall in May,
but on April 16 we team up with musicians as French, almost
as legendary, and slightly more irreverent: Les
Sans Culottes.
Fresh off our recent CD/DVD of music by American composer
Elliott Carter—one of the London Times’
2004 Records of the Year—Sospeso, with soprano Jennifer
Cobb, perform a postmodern cabaret: ‘instrumental
remixes’ by Joshua
Cody of songs by an unusual group of composers, including
Satie, Bjork,
Schoenberg,
the late George
Plimpton, and classical music’s ‘three Johns’
(Barry, Brahms,
and Ashcroft—yes,
that Ashcroft). Sospeso also premieres American composer
Chris Arrell’s
Harvard Fromm commission for ensemble and soprano.
New York’s foremost unsigned band Les
Sans Culottes—the Rhode Island School of Design’s
greatest contribution to music history since Talking Heads—takes
us back to swinging sixties France. The band’s sound
has variously been described as “Tristan Tzara and Little
Richard in a knife fight,” “Kim Fowley and Serge
Gainsbourg in a game of pictionary,” and “Laetitia
Casta, Marcel Duchamp, Tuli Kupferberg, and Charo playing
spin the bottle.”
Lithuanian DJ Zilvinas
will spin to a visual ambiance by Japanese-born architect
Tetsu Ohara,
lighting designer Miranda
Hardy, and video projectionist Paul
Clay. The team is drawing inspiration from a variety of
sources, from Weimar cabarets, to Godard and Vadim’s
France, to Warhol’s Factory. “I think the evening
marks a step forward in the history of Lithuanian-Franco-American
musical collaborations,” says Sospeso consultant Yasira
Nun.
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matthew
cody
conductor
jennifer
cobb
soprano
les
sans culottes special
guests
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