Name: Ekmeles: The Great Wall
Start: 2024-11-02T19:30:00-04:00
Location: Cary Hall at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music

Saturday, November 2 2024 at 7:30PM at the DiMenna Center's Cary Hall, Ekmeles performs The Great Wall, a program about language, distance, and love.
The program is anchored by Nigerian Swiss composer Charles Uzor's monumental new work The Great Wall, which sets excerpts from Franz Kafka's The Great Wall, and poems by Lu Xun. The texts are heard in the original German and Mandarin, as well as in translation, both from the singers and from an elaborate prerecorded part. The work is commissioned by Ekmeles funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
While Uzor works with existing texts and translation, the world premiere of a New Work from South African composer Andile Khumalo will set an original text by his countrywoman, pan-African feminist and queer poet Natalia Molebatsi.
Bethany Younge's Bright Void, commissioned by the Fromm Foundation, pairs the singers with innovative custom electronics. In addition to a synthesized part to be performed live by the composer, there is also a 3D printed siren which blends with the rough textures of the microtonal chest voice harmonies of the work.
Petros Leivadas's Cuál es su Ardor, heard here in its US premiere, sets texts by Cavafy and St. Augustine. Cavafy's poems, translated into Spanish and German, both have to do with the ancient past, describing loving inscriptions on tombstones. Augustine's Confessions contrasts with a section lamenting the author's arrival too late at his love for God.