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Five avant-garde concerts arrive at CentroCentro from September
CentroCentro approaches autumn with five concerts devoted to some of the most experimental proposals in its music programme. Between September and December, the auditorium at Palacio de Cibeles will host everything from the Indonesian duo Senyawa to a session devoted to Conlon Nancarrow’s piano compositions, which are virtually impossible to perform.
The first concert will take place on Friday 25 September at 19:30 with RAGE Thormbones. Weston Olencki and Mattie Barbier use only two trombones, extended techniques and sound processing to build textures that depart completely from the instrument’s conventional sound. They will perform material from their album breaking ships and, without a pause between the two sections, will give the world premiere of a new piece.
Just 24 hours later, on Saturday 26 at 19:30, it will be Senyawa’s turn. The duo formed in Java by Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi will perform in Madrid for the first time, with a mixture of improvisation, extreme vocal techniques, echoes of traditional Indonesian music and instruments built by the musicians themselves.
The Senyawa concert belongs to LIMO. Músicas corrientes, while RAGE Thormbones joins VANG. Músicas en vanguardia in collaboration with the Valencian festival ENSEMS. They are two different CentroCentro series sharing the same stage this autumn and a commitment to music that is difficult to fit into the most conventional circuits.
VANG will continue on 24 October with the French musician Lê Quan Ninh. The percussionist, active since the 1980s between contemporary music and free improvisation, will build his performance around a single large instrument: the orchestral bass drum.
On 28 November, LIMO will welcome Lise Barkas, a researcher, bagpiper and hurdy-gurdy player from Strasbourg. Her work starts from instruments associated with central European popular tradition to explore continuous sounds, just intonation and drone music. This will also be her first announced performance in Madrid within the series.
The season will end on Saturday 12 December with Conlon Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano. The American-Mexican composer wrote these pieces by punching player-piano rolls and taking advantage of the fact that a machine could execute speeds, superimpositions and rhythms physically impossible for a pianist’s hands. British researcher and composer Dominic Murcott will introduce the session and guide the audience through the works.
All five concerts will take place in the CentroCentro auditorium, in Plaza de Cibeles, and begin at 19:30. Tickets cost 10 euros plus booking fees and are already available for the announced performances, except for the Nancarrow session, whose booking has not yet opened.
The first opportunity will therefore be the final weekend of September: RAGE Thormbones on Friday 25 and Senyawa on Saturday 26, two consecutive nights to hear in Cibeles everything from an absolute premiere for two trombones to one of the most singular experimental projects to emerge from Indonesia.