Music prof premieres work in Germany

A new performative sound kinetic installation by Assistant Professor Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri will premiere at the ECLAT Festival in Stuttgart, Germany on February 3. Titled "Distanz," the work invites the audience to a refined and focused exploration of objects and sounds, carefully shaped and placed at different distances. 

The performative installation setting allows the performer to alternate between being a sound source, a kinetic element and an active mechanism. The work explores the kinesthetic relationships between instrument, devices and space. Distanz reflects Papalexandri's fascination of the forces of nature and the phenomena of physics – friction, electricity, vibration – making us wonder at what we see and hear.

Distanz was commissioned by the ECLAT 2018 - Festival Neue Musik Stuttgart and was written for cellist Séverine Ballon, who will perform the premiere.

Papalexandri is a Greek-born composer and sound artist based in Ithaca, New York, and Zurich, Switzerland. She has a degree from Goldsmith's, University of London, in composition; she continued her studies at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna before completing a doctorate in composition at the University of California–San Diego.

Her works interweave the borderlines of sound art, composition, visual objects, and performance and explore the factors that link these art forms and have been widely exhibited internationally. Her kinetic sound sculpture Speaking of Membranes, created in collaboration with Swiss artist Pe Lang, is part of the Saastamoinen permanent collection of Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland.

Papalexandri has been honored with numerous awards and residencies including the Berlin Senate Sound Art Award, Humboldt-University of Berlin International Fellowship, the Ernst Von Siemens Foundation Commission, the Dan David Prize for Contemporary Music, the International IMPULS Composition Award and Sound Artist in Residence St. John's College, University of Oxford, U.K.

Since its establishment in 1980, the ECLAT Festival has become a prestigious platform for new music in Germany. ECLAT’s aim is to present innovative trends in music today and to show their connection with the important compositions of the 20th and 21st centuries. More information can be found on ECLAT's website.