Guest Artist Recital: Virago featuring Michael Malis and Dominic Bierenga

Name: Guest Artist Recital: Virago featuring Michael Malis and Dominic Bierenga
Start: 2024-01-17T19:00:00-05:00
End: 2024-01-17T20:30:00-05:00
Location: Schaver Music Recital Hall

This event is in the past.

When:

January 17, 2024
7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Where:

Schaver Music Recital Hall
480 W. Hancock
Detroit, MI 48201

Event category: Special event

In-person

Guest Recital at Wayne State University: Virago feat. Michael Malis and Dominic Bierenga.

Listening From Darkness consists of From Darkness We Awaken by Michael Malis and Listening for Bells by Harriet Steinke. Both works rely heavily on improvisation, and deep listening, and heart-first sonic explorations.

From Darkness We Awaken was born from improvisational sessions between Malis and Virago in January 2020. The first movement — “Ceremoniously, Like a Dance” — explores cascading, wide open horizons of resonance for the musicians to impose themselves onto. In the second movement, “With a Quiet Confidence,” that diffusiveness coalesces into claustrophobia. The music collapses onto itself, spiraling out a knotty and chaotic texture flowing from that single crystalline note. The pressurized environment reaches a breaking point, leaking like a balloon with a tiny hole poked in it. The release valve comes fully open when the piano leads the ensemble in a collectively improvised exhale. The piece then makes its final descent in the short third movement, “Returning,” which picks up where the first movement leaves off.

Listening for Bells was crafted over a three year collaboration period between Steinke and Virago. The work is a 40 minute exploration of minimalism at the intersection of composition and improvisation. Steinke utilizes the number four as a unifying element. At the macro level, there are four parts to the piece (A, B, C, and D). On the micro level, each part is made up of four cells containing phrases for the players to perform at the timing they choose. The four cells bear the same instructions as the four parts: play “most of the time,” “sometimes,” “rarely,” or “when you hear bells.” The result is a micro form that is a fractal of the whole.

Virago is a new voice in classical music. Marked by intense chemistry and resistance to creative norms, Virago melds free improvisation and contemporary chamber music into a contagious headspace of out-of-the box expression. This unusually instrumented quartet improvises through collaborations with composers, audience members, visual artists, and musicians across genres, marking the path for the future of chamber music.

Virago has performed at festivals, concert halls, local businesses and public spaces across Michigan. Listening for Bells, Virago’s “bright, exuberant” debut EP featuring the music of Harriet Steinke, was released in January 2022. Virago curated “Audio/Visual” for the 2022 Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival with visual artist Megan Heeres (June 2022). They also presented their site-specific micro-cinema with A.W.E. Society, The Infinite Detail of this Place and Time, on University Musical Society’s Parable Path A2 Ypsi (March 2022). From Darkness We Awaken, an LP in collaboration with composer Michael Malis, was released in August 2022 with a live premiere on the Detroit Institute of Arts Friday Night Live series.

Passionate about the impact of free improvisation on personal and creative growth, Virago facilitates free improvisation workshops for K-12 students. Students are encouraged to access their creative voice more fluently and frequently, fostering abstract and critical thinking, highly democratic group decisions based on mutual respect and listening, risk-taking, and catharsis through personal creative expression.This ongoing program has been piloted at Beecher Schools in Flint, MI and at Girls Rock Detroit in Detroit, MI.

Virago was founded at the University of Michigan in 2018, and is based in Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan. Virago has been supported by the EXCEL Lab, ArtsEngine, Arts at Michigan, and the department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance.

Contact

Department of Music
music@wayne.edu

Cost

Free

Calendars

Main Events Calendar, Department of Music, College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts

Audience

Academic staff, Alumni, Community, Current students, Faculty, Parents, Prospective students, Staff

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