Into the Vortex
Lisa Illean’s ‘Weather a Rare Blue’ and Grisey’s masterwork Vortex Temporum, plus music by Messiaen and Fausto Romitelli.
Explore Ensemble make their debut at Kings Place as part of the 2018 TIME UNWRAPPED series
Vortex Temporum is the late masterwork of pioneering spectralist Gérard Grisey, fulfilling his vision of a music that transfigures our experience of time. Symphonic in sonic wealth and scale, with lush spectral harmonies and feverish dance-like rhythms, its three movements were imagined as adventures through three time-frames: ‘normal’, human time, the ‘expanded’ time of whales and the ‘compressed’ time of birds.
Paired with Grisey is one of his students, Fausto Romitelli, whose La sabbia del tempo (The Sands of Time) is similarly inspired by the rich granularity of sound and time, and a brand-new work from Australian composer Lisa Illean, herself inspired by Grisey.
