Lei Liang with Mivos Quartet: 'Six Seasons'
October 15, 2022: 8 PM
From the KPBS weekend arts preview:
The Nunavut Inuit indigenous community in Canada follows at least six seasons on their calendar, based on hunting and migration cues. This calendar informed a new work from composer and UC San Diego professor of music Lei Liang, based on a long collaboration with Scripps Institute of Oceanography scientists — specifically recordings made from the floor of the remote Chukchi Sea by oceanographers. In a live performance, Liang weaves new music with those sounds from the ocean, including water noises, the movement of ice and the sounds of belugas and other ocean creatures. The composition's title might suggest Vivaldi, but Liang's piece explores the transitions and journeys found in the sea, inspired by each Inuit season.
The piece is for electronics (the recordings) and strings (primarily in response to the recordings), commissioned by Mivos Quartet, and they'll perform the work in a unique and immersive concert presented by ArtPower UCSD.
Details: 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022. Conrad Prebys Music Center, 9500 Gilman Dr., UC San Diego. $9-$30.
—Julia Dixon Evans, KPBS
From ArtPower:
UC San Diego Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor, composer Lei Liang has been collaborating with Scripps oceanographers John Hildebrand and Joshua Jones in exploring the sound of the Chukchi Sea in the Arctic—one of the most inaccessible places to humans on earth. The resulting composition, Six Seasons, combines the sound of the ambient environment (ice, waves, wind), its inhabitants (beluga whales, bowhead whales, bearded seals)—captured by hydrophones deployed at the sea floor—and creative response from one of the world’s leading contemporary music string quartets, Mivos Quartet.
Related links:
Event information from ArtPower
Mivos Quartet on Instagram
