Images
1, 4 - 7 by Tyler Kurihara
2, 3, 8 by Ayse Koklu
Aaron Cassidy: What then renders these forces visible is a strange smile (or, First Study for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion) (2007-8)
Aaron Cassidy: songs only as sad as their listener (2006)
Brian Ferneyhough: Cassandra's Dream Song (1970)
Michael Finnissy: English Country Tunes (1977/ rev. 1982–1985) (excerpts)
Anthony Pateras and Steve Noble: Live improvisation
Russell Haswell: Live set
Performers
Russell Haswell electronics
Mark Knoop piano
Peter Yarde Martin trumpet
Sara Minelli flute
Steve Noble drums
Anthony Pateras piano/modular synth
David Roode trombone
Starting in the 1970s, two radically different schools began to push contemporary music to the outer limits of density and possibility.
The New Complexity movement that emerged among a group of exiled British composers living in Germany sought to reassert the modernist project against the prevailing minimalist aesthetic. At almost exactly the same time, dance music and free improvisation saw its own split on similar grounds, as a group of radicals left familiar territories and began to explore more intricate and intense terrain.
In this night, we let these two worlds collide, the music of the New Complexity school of Ferneyhough, Cassidy and Finnissy squaring up against the virtuosic improvisation of Noble, Pateras and Haswell