Carey Lovelace & Sharon Kanach, Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary

MUSIC TALK - Experimental Composers

listen | listen with RealPlayer First broadcast February 5, 2010 AIR’s David Weinstein speaks with with Carey Lovelace and Sharon Kanach, curators of the exhibition Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary, which features his musical scores, architectural drawings, conceptual renderings, pre-compositional sketches and graphic scores. Lovelace and Kanach first met at the foot of the great man in Paris in the 1970s where, as young composers, they grappled with both the beauty and complexity of his life's work. Lovelace moved on to become a writer, curator and arts activist. Kanach worked as Xenakis' translator, archivist and all-around assistant until his death in 2001, and continues to oversee his work as Vice-President of Centre Iannis Xenakis. If you are interested in swarming algorithms, polytopes, Markov chains, stochastics and parabolic hyperbolas, this is a fascinating and personal profile (58 minutes). This program features several samples of Xenakis' music, among them: Metastasis (1953-54), performed by Arturo Tamayo & Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, and excerpts of Xenakis' electronic compositions Polytope de Cluny (1972-74) and Habiki Hana Ma (1969-70). Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary is on view at The Drawing Center in New York from January 15–April 8, 2010), the Canadian Centre for Architecture from June 17–October 17, 2010) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles from November 7, 2010–February 13, 2011. A number of corollary events follow the exhibit, one of which, a presentation by Vincenzo Lombardo on his Virtual Electronic Poem Project, is available here.

Last Updated ( Friday, 12 February 2010 )