Mind on Fire launches double bill at The Voxel
How does one go about representing, musically, more than two million acres of protected wilderness and the story of how that came to be? Or tackling in a concerto the tussle between technology and individuality, with ego and avatar scored for bassoon?
If you’re the musical ensemble Mind on Fire, the answer is, first, to commission composer (and Peabody grad) Ruby Fulton and the innovative Icarus Quartet, put them together with videographers and geographers (yes: geographers—plural!), interviews and accounts; then to combine the results into a nine-movement symphonic performance titled Wilderness Suite.
This extraordinary, sweeping new composition—dubbed an “electric ballet for piano, percussion, and video—will be featured at The Voxel in Baltimore from February 20th-22nd. There the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness will come to vivid, sonic life in what Mind on Fire calls a “unique story of anti-development’.”
Wilderness Suite uses before and after images set into motion by eight video artists, along with live music and pre-recorded electronics, to examine the impression of humans on the environments we inhabit. A truly interdisciplinary collaboration, the piece features the collaboration among scientists, filmmakers, musicians, and community members—drawing from and shedding light on the stories the place and the people.
As if that weren’t enough, Mind on Fire continues their residency at The Voxel with a second original composition, Lancelot Chimera; this one conceived and performed—in multiple iterations of himself—by composer and Executive Director James Young, who also appearing as bassoonist for the work.
Lancelot Chimera, for all its titular nod to classical mythology, is an electroacoustic concerto for amplified bassoon and tape that explores games, technology, the permeable blur between artificial and actual creation, individual identity and inner demons, and maybe even the Apocalypse. No small order for an evening of music.
More information, dates and times, tickets, and more are at The Voxel or at Mind on Fire’s homepage here.
And you can hear Mind on Fire’s Executive Director, and composer/musician, James Young expound on both compositions in our conversation here:
