Today’s video premiere features clarinetist Gleb Kanasevich performing inti figgis-vizueta‘s no words for clarinet and electronics.
Recorded and filmed by James Praznik at Brandeis University, no words is an extensive 17-minute commission that requires manipulation of multiple pedals and sensitive interpretation of inti’s visually stunning and often poetic graphic score.
Here’s what inti had to say about no words:
no words confronts the increased police surveillance in gentrified neighborhoods, drawing and reflecting on my experiences from youth growing up in a majority Black & Salvadorian community and hood in Washington, D.C. The hybridized notations of the score and requirements of choice in enactment create a space of exploration, inquiry, and reflection.
About inti figgis-vizueta
inti figgis-vizueta (b. 1993) is a New-York based composer whose music focuses on combinations of various notational schemata, disparate and overlaid sonic plans, and collaborative unlearning of dominant vernaculars. She/they often write magically real musics through the lens of personal identities, braiding a childhood of overlapping immigrant communities and Black-founded Freedom schools—in Chocolate City (DC)—with Andean heritage and a deep connection to land(s). Reviewers say her music constantly toes the line between “all turbulence” and “quietly focused” (National Sawdust Log).
inti has most recently been named one of JACK Quartet’s inaugural JACK Studio artists; won the 2019 Hildegard Competition from National Sawdust, which culminated in the commission and premiere of Openwork, Knotted object // Trellis in bloom // lightning ache; been featured in the 2019 Underwood New Music Readings, which included the American Composer’s Orchestra reading Symphony for the Body; and participated in the 2019 Mizzou International Composer’s Festival, which featured Alarm Will Sound premiering Primavera Crown.
inti loves reading poetry, particularly Danez Smith and Joy Harjo. She also curates for score follower, an online archive championing universal access to contemporary musics. inti honors her Quechua grandmother, who was the only woman butcher on the whole plaza central and used to fight men with a machete.
About Gleb Kanasevich
Gleb Kanasevich is a clarinetist, composer, and noise/drone musician. He currently works primarily with feedback, modified instruments, and live processing. His blackened noise album Asleep came out in a small batch cassette tape and digital release on January 15, 2019, and the immersive 45-minute Subtraction was released on January 14, 2019 via Flag Day Recordings. His new solo doom/drone project If you want to be reborn, let yourself die, will come out on January 15, 2020 as a limited edition cassette release as well.
He has been a featured artist at Dark Music Days (Iceland), Spoleto Festival USA (Charleston, SC), New Music Gathering (headliner with Lunar Ensemble in January 2016), Equilibrium Concert Series (Boston, MA), Sonic Circuits Festival (Washington, DC), University of Oxford, Peabody Conservatory, Montclair State University, soundSCAPE Festival (Italy), Dias de musica electroacustica (Lisbon, Portugal), Interference Series (Flagstaff, AZ), and many more festivals, concert series, and universities.
Since 2013, he has been a core member of Ensemble Cantata Profana – a group based in New York City. In August 2018, he has taken on the duties of the ensemble’s Associate Artistic Director after moving to New York City. From 2016 until Spring, 2019, Kanasevich also worked as a curator/video maker for the online new music database and audio/video/score resource ScoreFollower/Incipitsify.