Chin.
About this Event
BlackBox Ensemble presents an evening of contemporary chamber music exploring the expressive relationship between the human voice and instrumental sound. Across works that move between narration, song, and fractured language, the ensemble becomes an extension of speech itself—echoing, distorting, and illuminating the voice.
In Andile Khumalo’s Shades of Words, scored for narrator and ensemble, the instruments trace and refract the rhythms of language in a score “rich with mysterious word painting.” The work sets poems by Alexandra Zelman–Doring, weaving storytelling with vivid sonic color.
The program also features the New York premiere of a diagnosis and the world premiere of when i was nine by Paul Novak, drawn from a larger cycle developed during his doctoral work at University of Chicago. These intimate works explore memory and perception through spare, precise musical gestures.
In A Mirror on Which to Dwell, Elliott Carter sets poems by Elizabeth Bishop, creating what he described as a musical “mirror of the words.” The title—drawn from Bishop’s poem Insomnia—suggests a reflective surface in which language and music refract one another, revealing new emotional depths within the poetry.
The evening concludes with Akrostichon–Wortspiel by Unsuk Chin, a fantastical cycle inspired by The Endless Story by Michael Ende and Alice through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Across seven scenes from these fairytales, language is dismantled and reassembled—words reversed, fragmented, or reduced to their sonic elements—while the ensemble shifts through finely tuned microtonal landscapes. The soprano navigates between these altered pitch worlds, embodying seven different emotional states ranging “from the bright to the grotesque”.
The performance of A Mirror on Which to Dwell is generously supported by the Amphion Foundation.
PROGRAM
Andile Khumalo, Shades of Words (2011)
Elliott Carter, A Mirror On Which to Dwell (1975)
Paul Novak, when i was nine (2025)
Paul Novak, a diagnosis (2024/25)
Unsuk Chin, Akrostichon-Wortspiel (1991, rev. 1993)
- I Hide and Seek
- II The Puzzle of the Three Magic Gates
- III The Rules of the Game – sdrawkcab emiT
- IV Four Seasons in Five Verses
- V Domifare S
- VI The Game of Chance
- VII From the Old Time
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, 450 West 37th Street, New York, United States
USD 17.85 to USD 28.52
