Qubit is a contemporary music program, and for this concert they’ve teamed up with Ekemeles, a vocal ensemble focused on microtonal contemporary music. Tuesday’s program, “Chant,” includes four recent pieces that are inspired by Medieval music.
Laure Hiendl’s Ray Ray of Light takes snippets of 12th century music and rearranges musical gestures into a flickering static. Onomastic Gymnastics, by Celeste Oram, takes inspiration from medieval French songs to explore quirky counterpoint. Laura Steenberge’s St. Martial and King Stephen is an arrangement of material from the 72 Verses for St. Martial, a polyphonic chant from 1029. And Striving after wind, by Alec Hall, is a meditation on the existentialism of King Solomon, as contained within the Book of Ecclesiastes.
with
Jeffrey Gavett, baritone
Charlotte Mundy, soprano
Jennifer Gersten, violin
Johnna Wu, violin
Nicolee Kuester, horn
Maggie Cox, bass
PROGRAM
Alec Hall — striving after wind (2025)
Laura Steenberge — St. Martial and King Stephen (2025)
Laure Hiendl — Ray Ray of Light (2022) excerpts
Celeste Oram — Onomastic Gymnastics (2019)
Celeste Oram — the power of moss (2021)
Laure Hiendl’s Ray Ray of Light† takes snippets of pre-modern, 12th century music and constantly rearranges cut-outs of musical gestures into a flickering static that blurs the boundary between gesture and texture; foreground and background. The singers act as a glitchy sampler, creates jarred, jagged sculptures of sound, existing as an afterimage within the interstices of multiple, musical presents.
Laura Steenberge’s St. Martial and King Stephen* is an arrangement of material from the 72 Verses for St.Martial, a polyphonic chant composed by Adémar de Chabannes in the year 1029. Composed for for 2 voices, 2 violins, contrabass, and French horn, it presents pitch material unchanged from the original chant, but with distortions of the original durations.
Striving after wind*, by Alec Hall, is a meditation on the existentialism of King Solomon, as contained within the Book of Ecclesiastes. Setting excerpts in English, the piece floats between harmonic fields and chant melodies, reflecting the agonies of our present through the Book’s timeless wisdom and perpetual search for meaning.
Onomastic Gymnastics, by Celeste Oram, takes inspiration from medieval French songs to explore both quirky counterpoint, as well as highly structured poetic forms, like the rondeau, which offer an opportunity to play with rhyme, repetition, and wordplay.
Live at St. Paul’s Chapel — or, watch on YouTube.
If you don’t have a current Columbia ID, you MUST register by clicking the blue “register” button below. (Please do not use the same email address to register multiple people; this will confuse the system.) Registration will close at 11am sharp the day before the concert.