Strange Machines premiere
- On September 05, 2022
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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Strange Machines, a new work for the Balourdet Quartet, will be premiered in the group’s 2022–2023 season, including a performance at Wigmore Hall. The work is commissioned with support from a Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant
Strange Machines imagines three quirky musical automata. In Alberti Machine we encounter a steam-punk music box, its buttons, levers and dials adjusting a familiar accompanimental pattern until the machine breaks. Bach meets Rube in Goldberg Machine, a contraption that careens between variations in a musical chain reaction. Mannheim Machine is a cliché-bot, an unhinged device that furiously spits out distorted musical tropes from the dawn of the symphony.