Within | Without Limit: Music for Cello is a series of two solo performances from internationally acclaimed musician Charles Curtis. The two programs feature delicate yet visceral works that challenge—and reward—the listener, opening up new musical landscapes both outside and within the work.

The second program takes full advantage of the generous acoustic properties of the Concert Hall while also showcasing repertoire that asks the listener to attend to subtle processes of transformation and speculation. Composer Carolyn Chen’s Rara Avis (2015) draws from the early-17th century piece Woodycock—anonymous in both authorial attribution and in its peculiar evocation of an elusive woodland bird. Éliane Radigue’s Occam V (2012) continues her series of solo and ensemble pieces Occam Ocean, written for individual instrumentalists; each performer’s technique and relationship to their instrument provide the foundation for the musical material. Curtis’s own Unfinished Song (1998), a work for multiple cellos and sine waves, is an immersive, swirling, and contrapuntal work influenced by the harmonic world of alternate tunings, renaissance music, South Asian raga-style improvisation, and the song structures of popular music.

Program

• Woodycock (17th c.)
• Anonymous
• Rara Avis (2015)
• Carolyn Chen
• Occam V (2012)
• Éliane Radigue
• Hélas! et comment (14th c.)
• Guillaume de Machaut
• C’est force, faire (14th c.)
• Machaut
• Unfinished Song (1998)
• Charles Curtis

Within | Without Limit: Music for Cello is a series of two solo performances from internationally acclaimed musician Charles Curtis. The two programs feature delicate yet visceral works that challenge—and reward—the listener, opening up new musical landscapes both outside and within the work.

NALDJORLAK

Composed specifically for Curtis and premiered in 2005, French composer Éliane Radigue’s hour-long Naldjorlak exists at the instrument’s limits—at the threshold of resonance and its disappearance. The result is what Radigue calls, “a wild and frail, versatile and volatile world of sounds” that pierces through to an intense intimacy. Performed in Studio 2, this performance is a rare opportunity to experience this intensity up-close.

Program

• Naldjorlak (1963)
• Éliane Radigue

Composer and artist Raven Chacon are in residence in EMPAC Studio 2 with San Francisco-based experimental music duo The Living Earth Show to begin preliminary recording for a new work to premiere in fall 2025.

Composers and technologists Jason Thorpe Buchanan and Christopher Chandler are in residence in Studio 1—Goodman to develop and workshop their new interactive spatial sound, video, and light environment for an upcoming commissioned project with contemporary music ensemble [Switch~ Ensemble]. During this residency period, they also experiment with new VR interfacing technology developed by EMPAC audio engineers which utilizes gaming technology to deploy spatial audio in the venue.

Composer Sarah Davachi’s residency takes place in the EMPAC Concert Hall to begin preliminary recording for a new work to be premiered in fall 2025.

Composer-performers Charmaine Lee and Conrad Tao are in residence in EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman to record new music drawn from the sonic language of their eight-year-long duo collaboration.

Belgian sound and visual artist Maika Garnica is in residence in Studio 2 and the Concert Hall to document her sound sculptures. Her work examines and questions the relationships between object, body, sound, and space.

Pan Daijing conducts a research and development residency to establish work on a possible future commission with the curatorial program. Taking full advantage of the expert staff and advanced technical venues at the center, Daijing explores the implications of music, dance, and video intersections following her monograph exhibition at Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany.

Pianists Ning Yu and Corey Smythe, along with technologist and performer Levy Lorenzo, develop and prepare Brigitta Muntendorf’s two piano work Trilogy for two pianos, tape, and live electronics for its premiere at the 2024 edition of TIME:SPANS Festival in New York City.

Brigitta Muntendorf makes the concert introduction at the festival with curator Amadeus Julian Regucera.