the march 1 new yorker was one of those perfectly formed issues they put out a coupe of times a year.

alex ross has me excited to learn more about iannis xenakis. in his waveforms article, we learn of the proposed settings for xenakis’ “polytopes”: multimedia experiences that blended electronic sound, live performance, light shows, and temporary structures. these included persepolis in iran.

empress farah, the wife of the shah, admired xenakis and regularly invited him to her arts festival in shiraz. at one point sheasked him to design a vast arts complex for that city. the plans are intriguing: ine notation calls for a ten-thousand square-foot hall of nothingness. in 1976 however, xenakis stopped working in iran, citing its “inhuman and unnecessary police repression”.

xenakis- architect + musician- generally a winning combo- was at one point an assistant to le corbusier before committing to music and there is an exhibition of his compositional, mathematical and architectural sketches currently on at the drawing center on wooster st which i’m hoping to check out this weekend.

alex says ‘to understand fully how his pieces are put together, you need a good working knowledge of probability theory and combinatorial mathematics, among other disciplines‘ and end his piece with xenakis quoted as wanting ‘a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciosuness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect.‘

Related articles by Zemanta

• Persepolis + Remixes Edition 1 (netnewmusic.net)
• Xenakis at the Mall (netnewmusic.net)
• (avant-garde composer) Iannis Xenakis exhibit at Drawing Center + related shows (JACK Quartet, So Percussion, more) (brooklynvegan.com)

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