Prospective Programs

Ars Poetica

This program brings a more varied collection of performers and a variety of voices with an instrumental collection of piano, violin, viola, cello, guitar, clarinet, and spoken word poet. Eric Moe's What Instruments We Have Agree (2015) is an elegy inspired by the death of the composer's friend Lee Hyla.  Before, from composer Kyle Bartlett of Philadelphia,  imagines an origin of music, and postulates a rapid elevation of complexity,  as the proto-language quickly develops grammar and signification that is resonant with but different from chamber music's primary tongue. Harness for clarinet, violin, viola, and cello by Suzanne Sorkin was commissioned by Chamber Music America for the ensemble counter)induction in 2020. The composition is loosely structured in five sections. As the piece unfolds, one element from the preceding section – such as a rhythm, melodic motive, or short chord progression – is "harnessed" to create the next formal section, but placed in an entirely different timbral context. In this way, timbre is used as both a variation procedure and a structural device within the work.  Douglas Boyce's Ars Poetica is a multimedia work that seeks to reconnect with ancient oral storytelling traditions like griots and jongleurs, combining poetry and musical performance, drawing from modern and medieval devices of Western Art Music, and also from poet Marlanda Dekine's roots in Gullah Geechee culture and West/Central African influences.

Studio recording AGAINST METHOD on New Focus Recordings.

Jukka Tiensuu: Rubato (1975

Jeffrey Mumford: Undiluted Days (2000)

Kyle Bartlett: Teratography (2016)

Douglas Boyce: De rerum natura (2024) premiere

Diego Tedesco Scherzo (2020)

counter)inducton performs Bartlett’s ‘Before’ at the Corcoran School for the arts in DC, Fall 2019

Kyle Bartlett: Before (2019)

Mark Rimple: Phantasmagoria (2023)

Yoon-Ji Lee: Up and Out (2024)

Douglas Boyce: Dit de l’alerion (2021)

counter)inducton with Marlanda Dekine performing Ars Poetic in Washington DC, Spring 2023.

Eric Moe: What Instruments We Have Agree (2015)

Kyle Bartlett: Before (2019)

Suzanne Sorkin: Harness (2020)

Douglas Boyce: Ars Poetica (2021)

The Order of Things

A cosmopolitan consideration of music in the now, The Order of Things draws on composers and music from three continents, varied cultural and historical contexts, and different notions of the aesthetic entailments of the Modern. Jukka Tiensuu's Rubato explores the relationship between the individual and the collective. All players share a single melodic line but perform it with free tempos, creating ever-shifting layers of polyphony. In Mumford's Undiluted Days, the piano takes the lead, with violin and cello adding texture. The piece traverses varied tempos and moods, from anxiety to joy, with a soundscape ranging from dreamy to intense, reflecting the unfolding richness of lived experience. Bartlett's Teratography incorporates elements of 1960s and 1970s rock within a Modernist idiom, replacing the repetitive patterns of American minimalism with playful explorations of monsters and giants. In De Rerum Natura, Boyce contemplates the limits of rationality and the elusive nature of knowledge, which always falls short in describing reality. Tedesco's Scherzo juxtaposes descending chromaticism with stasis, echoing classical form. It progresses through repetition, chaos, and transformation, exploring themes of disunion and similarity. The piece establishes order, disrupts it, then restores it. This pluralist snapshot of the contemporary will be performed in NY on 10 Oct, 2024.

Juxtapositions

c)i also presents program with more direct relationship to the core of the classical repertoire

These programs sit both within the chamber music tradition but also within the liminal space between Modernism's severity and "Classical" music's balanced restraint. In 4x4, a program for piano quartet, Douglas Boyce's Piano Quartet No. 2 opens the program with clouds of sound and a sepulchral mood, gradually transforming into a playful dance. Kyle Bartlett's Teratography transforms populist gestures and riffs into post-tonal savagery. Yorko Kojima's Jardin en tranquilité closes the first half with a contemplative, quiescent mood so restrained to be unsettling. These are juxtaposed with Dvorak's Piano Quartet in D Major, a work whose classical form sublates harmonic and melodic fluidity with folk music moods. In 3x3, Brahm's genre-defining Trio for Clarinet, 'cello, and Piano is juxtaposed with Katharina Rosenberger's surge for prepared piano, clarinet, and violoncello adopts compositional techniques from electronic music: sampling, recycling, and the application of filters or additive synthesis, while Douglas Boyce's The Hunt by Night expands the kinetic potential of the ensemble.

c)i is happy to develop analogous programs with different instrumentations that connect to the 'waystones' of the standard repertoire.

Rotations

"Rotations" is a concert that explores a diverse range of compositional styles through the unique perspective of an unconventional ensemble of instruments. It traces the currents and connections across existing and unexplored musical territories, guided by technical and historical viewpoints, with a specific focus on the integration of the classical guitar in chamber music settings.  Kyle Bartlett's Before imagines an origin of music, and postulates a rapid elevation of complexity,  as the proto-language quickly develops grammar and signification that is resonant with but different from chamber music's primary tongue.  This program features two works composed for c)i, with premieres planned in Spring 2025: Mark Rimple's Phantasmagoria, which considers creators from the last hundred years: Varo, DuChamp, Zappa, Picasso, and Eliot; and Yoon-Ji Lee's yet-to-be-titled work, featuring the Boston-based composer's unconventional, non-linear music, interweaving rapidly transforming gestures, textures,, and tone colors, all weaved intricately into both acoustic and electroacoustic mediums.  Boyce's Dit de l'alerion connects the Modern with the Ancient, drawing from Machaut's poem/essay on falconry and the character of human relations.  Typically for a counter)induction concert, all these pieces investigate counterpoint and virtuosity, modernity and historicity, art and ontology.