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Bernard Rands’s Danza Petrificada in Mexican Premiere; Composer Residency at Sarajevo Festival

Jun. 03, 2013

Bernard Rands’s <em>Danza Petrificada</em> in Mexican Premiere; Composer Residency at Sarajevo Festival

Given its world premiere by Riccardo Muti in his inaugural season as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Rands’s Danza Petrificada is an evocative single movement work for orchestra that pays tribute to the 200th anniversary of the start of Mexico's War of Independence.  The work is honored with its Mexican premiere performances this month. Ronald Zollman leads the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) in the Mexican premiere on June 29 and 30 at the Sala Nezahualcoyotl in Mexico City. Danza Petrificada takes its title from a poem by Octavio Paz, as Rands explains:

[Paz] describes a Mexican village as, ‘[…] festin de formas, danza petrificada bajo las nubes que hacen y se deshacen y no acaban de hacerse, siempre en tránsito hacis su forma venidera (a banquet of forms, a petrified dance under the clouds that make and unmake and never stop making themselves, always in transit toward their future forms).’ Such a wonderful description of the phenomenon of music itself!

Also this month, Rands is featured as Composer-in-Residence, June 7 through 16, at the Sarajevo Festival in Bosnia, which includes a performance of his Memo 5 for solo piano by Ursula Oppens; and Chanticleer performs "She's combing her yellow hair," a movement from Rands's beautiful Canti d'Amor, based on James Joyce's Chamber Music, at Sonoma College, California on June 26.

Musical organizations and institutions the world over are set to honor Bernard Rands on the occasion of his 80th birthday throughout the 2013/14 and 2014/15 seasons. If your ensemble wishes to join in the celebrations, please don't hesitate to send us your programming inquiries at info@eamdc.com.

Learn more on the life and work of Bernard Rands at www.bernardrands.com and www.schott-music.com.

Bernard Rands
Danza Petrificada (2011)
for orchestra
pic.3(3.afl).2.ca.Ebcl.3(3.bcl).2-4.3.2.btbn.1-timp.4perc-2hp.cel-str
9’

Memo 5 (1975)
for solo piano
9'

Canti d'Amor (1991)
for mixed choir a cappella
text (Eng.) based on James Joyce's Chamber Music
22'

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