April 22, 2017
Piano Installation with Derangements
arc.hive
2516 Bridge St.
Victoria, BC
@1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
More information: arc-hive.weebly.com
Facebook Event: Piano Installation with Derangements
Admission: By Donation
On April 22nd from 1:00 to 4:00 pm, near the close of the 'strange knowledge' exhibition, Christopher Reiche will perform Chedo Barone's composition Piano Installation with Derangements. Piano Installation with Derangements by Chedo Barone consists of 750 coupled derangements of the major scale (derangement refers to a permutational mode in combinatorial mathematics where by no element of a given set, such as a scale, appears in its original place). Presented as an "installation", this work allows for the audience to come and go as they please, walk around, or stay for the whole performance. The performance will be followed by a Q & A.
As suggested by eldritch Priest's book Boring Formless Nonsense, the work attempts to provide a sensation of the sublime by stretching the limits of the listener's ability to comprehend the entire work, but falls short as that the revelation of this failure becomes continually less dramatic resulting in a sense of boredom and ambivalence. Since the listeners are able to come and go as they please, the only person required to face the full impact of this boredom is the performer.
"Staged as an 'installation' so that the listeners... might come and go as they wish, the piece, says Barone, is actually intended for the performer, whose encounter with boredom, because he or she 'must pay attention or the piece collapses,' does not have the luxury of being carried away from its monotony."
~eldritch Preist, Boring Formless Nonsense: Experimental Music and the Aesthetics of Failure (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 82.
Christopher Reiche is a performer and composer in Victoria BC known for his enthusiasm for performing and composing for unusual instruments and performance situations. He is not unfamiliar with performing works that investigate boredom and long durations. In 2013, he completed a solo performance of Erik Satie's Vexations, a musical phrase that is repeated 840 times, in just under 24 hours.
Reiche performs occasionally in Victoria at A Place to Listen or on concerts hosted by the Victoria Composers Collective. He is also known as Victoria Engagement Leader for the Canadian Music Centre’s Victoria Creative Hub, New Music Coordinator for Open Space Arts Society, and is currently President of the Canadian League of Composers. He teaches piano, theory, and composition lessons at Brentwood College and the Victoria Conservatory of Music.
christopherreiche.tumblr.com
Chedo Barone is a composer living in Victoria BC and is a sessional lecturer at the University of Victoria in Mathematics.