Racer Session #349 | patchtax | November 6, 2016
Hello Racer folk!
This Sunday at the Racer Sessions, we're thrilled to welcome the Boston-based duo patchtax, who are currently storming towards Seattle on a West Coast tour. Saxophonist Mary Joy Patchett and violist Eve Boltax, Patchtax will perform a durational work that "creates a slow, ever-changing sound world that has a mesmeric and meditative effect." Be sure to read below for a great pre-concert artistic statement from the band. We look forward to seeing you at 8pm this Sunday, Nov. 6th at Cafe Racer!
"patchtax will be presenting a durational work, Intonation, by Chicago based composer Elliot Cless. It's a work dedicated to ritual, where the saxophonist plays groups of related multiphonics that change over time, while the violist adjusts her open-string tuning to the saxophone. This dynamic relationship creates a slow, ever-changing sound world that has a mesmeric and meditative effect.
Mary Joy (saxophone) has been working with Elliot since 2012 when she workshopped and performed his solo work for soprano saxophone at a summer music festival in Florence, Italy. Patchtax invited Elliot to write a work for them while they were at a month long residency at the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in January of 2015. This initiated an evolving compositional process, similar to the nature of the piece.
"The flickering intensity of before. Matches barely struck...the uncertain sparks peek out, find air, engorge."
About patchtax: patchtax is dedicated to redefining the parameters of new music. The duo, comprised of saxophonist Mary Joy Patchett, and violist Eve Boltax, was founded in 2013. At its core, patchtax is a chamber music ensemble with a non-traditional instrumentation exploring unconventional performance practices. Patchtax's repertoire includes a broad range of original arrangements of early to modern classical pieces to contemporary works including new commissions. Patchtax has a multidisciplinary approach to chamber music that incorporates self-produced video, dance/movement, theatrical staging, costumes, and character development. This expansive design creates new understanding of the repertoire leading to deeper, more challenging collaborations and vitalized relationships with our audiences. Working within a discipline that has deeply embedded traditions, patchtax creates unique worlds on stage, addressing the need within the classical music community to seek new ways of relating to 21st century audiences.
Here are some words from Elliot:
The "intonation" stems from medieval music as a pre-prelude, a warming up of both the musician and the instrument. For patchtax, this intonation involves a ritual tuning of not only the instruments, but the minds and spirits of MJ and Eve . . .a chaconne constantly forming . . .dynamic interplay rich in the paradoxes of relating to another.
The flickering intensity of before. Matches barely struck . . .the uncertain sparks peek out, find air, engorge. Begin. Act generously, providing tone, breathing, asking nothing, waiting, starting with renewed focus, at the threshold of music, at the threshold of communication. Blowing, almost out. Refining and preparing, tuning to oneself, to another, to an emerging focus through which time occasionally will ooze on its sumptuous pursuit of the next beginning. Almost to that point. Journey-less, an attempt is made to arrive. Hovering and waiting. Almost to that flickering intensity of uncertain flames on the edge of before. Out. Combining sounds to begin a path. Starting with communication, with compromise, with accommodation. Take air out of no thing, there at the outset of a likely occurrence, and there searching for a threshold on which to focus. Tinkering in the outset before an attempt, an act of defiance, blowing out matches barely struck before time’s next pursuit. Flames ooze to that point before which uncertain sparks begin. A path towards connection combines with a question of before. Almost time. Ask. Define compromise before beginning, waiting for an attempt to act. Liminal tones flicker occasionally...an attempt. Music is hovering in the air, out of almost out before occurring with renewed focus, combining sounds to pursue the next beginning with compromise and defiance, generously providing tones that arrive out of air and almost out of time. An act of communication sounds compromised, and must wander through uncertain time. Define compromise . .
