Discreet Gossamer: Contact at Open Space

Part of "The June Weekend of New Music" On Sunday June 26 at 6:30 p.m. Open Space will host Contact in an exciting double feature. Contact will present "A Gossamer Bit" created in collaboration with Toronto composer Allison Cameron. Following "A Gossamer Bit" they will perform their own arrangement Brian Eno’s "Discreet Music". Weekend Pass: $25 Advance: $16 general, $11 students/seniors/members Door: $20 general, $15 students/seniors/members Contact’s recording of :A Gossamer Bit" was named one of the WIRE Magazine’s top 50 releases for 2015. Contact also recorded "Discreet Music" as a 40th celebration of the anniversary of the release of the original version. Contact’s arrangement of this piece looks back to the adventurous experimentalism of the original work but also pushes boundaries through its use of acoustic and electric instruments. Not only expanding the length of the the original work but places it into the realm of live performance. Check out Saturday's event as well! mosse-elva http://www.openspace.ca/mosse_elva About Discreet Music: On the 40th anniversary of the release of Brian Eno’s electronic ambient masterpiece Discreet Music, Toronto based chamber music ensemble Contact weighs in with a modern arrangement by percussionist Jerry Pergolesi that harks back to the adventurous experimentalism of the original. In Contact’s version, acoustic and electric instruments (cello, violin, soprano saxophone, guitar, double bass, vibraphone, piano, flute and gongs) take the place of Eno’s EMS synthesizer, channeling the underlying melodies of the piece until the ensemble itself becomes a kind of “looping apparatus,” as Pergolesi describes it. “My hope is that this recording pays homage to an influential piece of music and fulfills its own purpose as, in Eno’s words, ‘not something intrinsic to certain arrangements of things – to [a] certain way of organizing sounds – but actually a process of apprehending that we, as listeners, could choose to conduct. Music is something your mind does.’” About A Gossamer Bit Over the past ten years, Contact has collaborated with composer Allison Cameron several times. This work has culminated in our recording, A Gossamer Bit. The result of a truly collaborative process using compositional techniques that allow for the ensemble to make decisions about how and what we play specifically, often resulting in a true departure from the original intent. As more and more contemporary concert music composers explore these techniques, a new hybrid of experimental music evolves that is somewhere between composed and improvised and may be thought of as “comprivised” music. This idea of “comprivised” music is gradually closing the gap between “art” music and “popular” music, as more and more bands who are championing the indie spirit are blurring the lines between “classical” and “pop” as a new genre emerges that can be thought of as “indie-classical”. A Gossamer Bit was listed as one of the best recordings of 2015 by Steve Smith (Night After Night) and The Wire magazine.