Repertoire
Cassandra Miller:
Tracery: Lazy, Rocking (2017) 8’
For Mira (2013) 6’
Bel Canto (2011) 17’
Traveller Song (2017-18) 21’
Artists
Juliet Fraser, soprano
Plus-Minus Ensemble
Laia Bobi Frutos, flute
Vicky Wright, clarinet
Tom Pauwels, guitar
Mira Benjamin, violin
Katarzyna Zimińska, viola
Alice Purton, cello
Roderick Chadwick, piano
Mark Knoop, piano/accordion
Program
Cassandra Miller, guest composer at L’Auditori in 2020 and 2021, works by constantly appropriating concepts and fragments from other genres. Miller selects from a radically wide range of recordings of popular and traditional music, old scores and manuscripts, diluting them down to produce a completely new, multi-layered sound.Tracery is an ongoing collaborative project between the composer and soprano Juliet Fraser. Based on a Deep Listening exercise, focusing on oral traditions and their vocal expression, the performers experiment with the limits of freedom and vulnerability on stage.
Bel Canto is based on a fragment of Puccini’s Vissi d’arte sung by Maria Callas, composed using Miller’s method of taking parts of recordings, including found footage, and using them as structural seeds.
Traveller Song is a tour de force of the appropriation method: using manipulated recordings of the composer herself singing traditional Sicilian music from the collection of Alan Lomax, the processes of mixing, translating and transforming go far beyond the conventional concept of arranging or adapting music, to produce something that is quite radical and new.
