4-5 May 2012: Perspective:Xenakis is the first biannual festival focusing on the work of one innovative 20th or 21st century composer.  Conscious aims of the festival include representing the totality of a composer’s output as well as bringing both committed and acclaimed interpreters of the chosen composer’s music to Austin.  This festival intends to fill a niche in the already spectacular cultural milieu of Texas’s capital.

On Friday evening, Meehan/Perkins Duo, North America’s foremost percussion duo, joins Austin’s own line upon line percussion and Timothy Briones in performances of Xenakis’s two massive percussion sextets. On Saturday afternoon, Austin’s Michelle Schumann (piano) and Steve Parker (trombone) as well as Mike Zell (percussion) will play some of the most virtuosic music ever written for their instruments. The festival concludes on Saturday evening with JACK Quartet performing the complete Xenakis string quartets, their performances of which have been hailed by Alex Ross of The New Yorker as “exceptional” and “beautifully harsh.”

Each concert will be preceded by a viewing of the 50 minute BBC documentary, Something Rich and Strange: The Life and Music of Iannis Xenakis. A brief post-concert talkback with the artists and two preeminent Xenakis scholars, Nouritza Matossian and Benoît Gibson, will follow each performance.

For more information, please visit the Festival website: https://lineuponlinepercussion.org/perspectivexenakis