Two Belgian premieres and a world premiere
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Michael Daugherty, Andrew Norman, and Keiko Devaux… It’s quite possible that you’ve never heard of these composers before. But that’s about to change in November when the Belgian National Orchestra performs works by each of these composers during the Metropolis concert. What can you expect? Two Belgian premieres and a world premiere by Keiko Devaux!
The multiple Grammy-winning composer Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) is among the ten most-performed American composers of concert music. He studied composition under prominent 20th-century composers like Pierre Boulez at IRCAM in Paris, Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Bernard Rands, and Roger Reynolds at Yale, and György Ligeti in Hamburg. In the early 1980s, Michael Daugherty also worked as an assistant to jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York. His music, performed worldwide, is recorded by the Naxos label.
Inspired by the 50th anniversary of the superhero Superman, Michael Daugherty began composing his five-part Metropolis Symphony. “Each movement, which can be performed separately, responds to the myth of Superman. I used Superman as a compositional metaphor to create an independent musical world that sparks the imagination. The symphony is a rigorously structured, non-programmatic work that expresses the energy, ambiguities, paradoxes, and humor of American popular culture. Like Charles Ives, whose music evokes memories of small-town America in the early 20th century, I draw from my eclectic musical background to reflect on metropolitan America at the end of the 20th century. Through complex orchestration, sound exploration, and rhythmic polyphony, I combine the idioms of jazz, rock, and funk with symphonic and avant-garde composition.”
The first movement of this Metropolis Symphony, Lex, is named after Superman’s greatest enemy: the industrial tycoon Lex Luthor. In this movement, a devilishly fast solo violin is pursued by the orchestra, which includes four referee whistles.
Andrew Norman (b. 1979) lives and works in Los Angeles. Recently praised as "the leading composer of his generation" (Los Angeles Times), his compositions are an eclectic mix of sounds and performance practices. Sometimes experimental, sometimes traditional, sometimes lyrical, sometimes prickly, sometimes intimate, sometimes epic, sometimes rigorously structured, and sometimes freely intuitive, Andrew Norman’s music casts a wide sonic and conceptual net to explore, reflect, and challenge the experiences of our time. He believes in the transformative energy of live performances and is often drawn to creating music that harnesses the beauty, power, and vulnerability of taking risks.
Andrew Norman’s large-scale orchestral work Play was described by the New York Times as a "breathtaking masterpiece" and "a revolution in music." The Belgian National Orchestra will perform the first movement—or rather, the first level—of this virtuosic, vibrant composition which consists of three levels.
“Play explores many different ideas,” Andrew Norman once said, “ideas about choice, chance, free will, and control; about how technology has rewired our brains and changed the way we express ourselves; about the blurred boundaries of reality in the internet age; about the dark place where video games and drone warfare meet, or where cyberbullying and real-world violence intersect. Play touches on the corrupting influence of power and the collapse and rebirth of social systems, but it also explores the physicality and pleasure of instrumental play, as well as the many potential meanings of coordinated human activity—how the display of mass human synchronicity can represent both the best and the worst of our race.”
On 16 November, the Belgian National Orchestra will present the world premiere of a new work by Canadian composer Keiko Devaux (b. 1982). She studied at the University of Montreal and also with Salvatore Sciarrino at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana (Siena, Italy). In her compositions, she manipulates and distorts acoustic sounds with digital tools, then transcribes or re-translates them into music notation and the acoustic domain. Three questions for Keiko Devaux!
Does Fractured Landscapes tell a particular story?
The work explores the encounters and tensions between plant life, urban structures, and wild growth. Certain plant species have adapted to urban landscapes by developing denser and heavier seeds that fall faster and more locally. This creates a kind of "fractured landscape" of different plant species in urban environments. I like to imagine that, even though the natural landscape is hindered by the urban landscape, there is a new kind of strength in the way plant species propagate and disperse their seeds. They not only survive but also change their new environment, cracking it open, pushing themselves through it.
Which compositional techniques do you use in your piece?
I’m very interested in exploring superpositions and juxtapositions of contrasting harmonic and stylistic genres to create a dialogue (and often an evolution of this dialogue) in my work. In Fractured Landscapes, the urban dialogues with the natural landscape. I translate this into a dialogue between a more traditional harmonic language with clear moments of tension and resolution, and a modern harmonic language with shifting clusters and slowly evolving harmonies around inner tonal centers and ostinatos. My composition moves back and forth between the different speeds and experiences of time that these two harmonic languages bring. Naturally, this also brings shifts between a more “noise”-focused, textural, contemporary compositional technique and a purer, more traditional tonality. Two worlds overlap and reveal each other.
Where can we find you when you’re not composing?
I train and coach as a boxer. As a composer, you reflect, listen, play with ideas, and write—all of which are physically very static. To find balance, I find it important to stay very physically active. Boxing is also a mentally very engaging sport. I find it a beautiful contrast!
