21. March 2017

The early Partch

In 2013, we opened the Ruhrtriennale festival with the European premiere of Harry Partch’s late masterwork, Delusion of the Fury – A Ritual of Dream and Delusion (1965–66). It is on this occasion, that the entire ensemble of instruments has been completely reconstructed with the support of Kulturstiftung des Bundes and Kunststiftung NRW and has been property of Ensemble Musikfabrik since. We benefited from this chance with the project “pitch 43_tuning the cosmos”, which gives composers from various nationalities the opportunity to study the Partch instruments and to compose new works for them. From composers like Simon Steen-Andersen, Carola Bauckholt or Sampo Haapamäki we thereby received fanciful works that confront the listener with Partchs highly complex pitch system – sometimes more, sometimes less.

Nevertheless, all these new developments have their origin in the visionary Harry Partch. Therefore, we went back to the source and rehearsed some of Harry Partch’s own, early compositions. Three pieces from the 1950th and earlier, that have distinctive charm because of their chamber music quality.

The following video gives an exciting insight into the rehearsal process of the current Partch project:

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The results of this work phase can be experienced in this short compilation of our concert at the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens on February 23, 2017:

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The next performance of this program is on April 6, 2017 in the context of the Free!Music festival at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.