The Holland Festival presents an evening programme in three parts built around Luciano Berio's masterpiece
Laborintus II, performed by singer Mike Patton, Ictus and the Netherlands Chamber Choir. Laborintus II will be performed in the first segment, followed by improvised set by Mike Patton, Ictus and guest jazz musicians (including the Dutch great Han Bennink) in the second; after the second interval the programme closes with a DJ set inspired by the music of Italian B-movies from the 1960s, which will also be shown in the hall.
Laborintus II was originally composed for radio broadcast and while it indeed betrays certain characteristics of a radio play it is clearly the work of one of the greatest Italian music theatre composers of the twentieth century. This 'chamber opera' is considered one of the highlights of Berio's oeuvre. Ictus and the Netherlands Chamber Choir performed the work previously in Bruge, in a decor with video images by Visual Kitchen; this decor will also serve as the backdrop for the 2010 Holland Festival performance.
Berio composed
Laborintus II in 1963-65, while teaching at Mills College in Oakland, California. It was commissioned by the French radio and television company ORTF to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the birth of Dante. The libretto is by Berio's friend Edoardo Sanguinetti, a prominent Dante scholar who published a set of poetry in 1956 entitled Laborintus, and consists of a series of passages from Dante's most important works: the early Vita Nuova, the philosophical treatise Convivio and the
Divina Commedia, to which Sanguinetti added excerpts from the Bible and from the works of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and himself. Dante's critique of usury is the focal point of the libretto. Midway through the second part is the Dante quote 'La musica e tutta relativa', which Berio publicly confirmed to be a second crucial theme of the work: music poses the question of the relationship between mankind and his world by stretching itself across time, in the present and the past, and by linking separate memories.
The score calls for three unspecified female voices, a narrator, an eight-voice mixed choir, a 17-member ensemble (with a prominent role for a jazz drummer) and pre-recorded tape. The work is divided into two sections of approximately 20 and 15 minutes, respectively and unfolds as a series of musical sketches that seem to be evoked by the text and the narrator. In a sense the text functions as Ariadne's thread in a labyrinth of sound. The work was conceived as a 'catalogue', in the sense of a list or summary, gathering disparate items under a single heading; this is true for the text as well as the music. Additionally it is a catalogue of vocal possibilities, which Berio - a master of writing for the human voice - utilizes to its fullest. The work was dedicated to Berio's second wife, Susan Oyama, a psychology student Berio met while teaching at Mills College and whom he married in 1966.
Mike Patton (b. 1968) is a versatile American musician, best known as the singer of the band Faith No More. His musical career began in 1985 when he and a number of friends founded the experimental Mr. Bungle, a band that continued to exist after Patton in 1989 joined Faith No More, with which he had great success – that very same year,
The Real Thing (the group's third album) came out and landed in the top ten on the charts. In 1998, Faith No More officially disbanded, only to reunite in the summer of 2009 for a number of performances at European festivals. During his period with Faith No More, Patton was regularly involved with other projects, including Mr. Bungle, and after the group fell apart this only increased. He has performed and recorded with such diverse artists as Tomahawk, Fantômas, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Peeping Tom and Björk, and has put out albums on the Tzadik label of avant-garde musician John Zorn. In 1999, Patton and Greg Werckman founded an independent label, Ipecac Recordings, of which he has been director since then. During the Holland Festival 2008 he featured in Mondo Cane, a programme on Italian pop songs from the 1960s. As an actor and voice actor he has worked on a number of films and video games; he has also composed film music for various productions. With his huge palette of styles and vocal techniques, he is considered one of the most interesting and talented singers in rock.
Ictus is a Flemish ensemble for contemporary music that since 1994 has been housed in the buildings of the Rosas dance company in Brussels. Its programming focuses on music written after 1950 and covers an extremely broad stylistic range – from Aperghis to Reich, from Murail to Waits – with an emphasis on contemporary repertoire. The ensemble ensures coherency for each concert by grouping works around a theme (such as ‘transcription’, ‘layered time’, ‘nocturne’, ‘irony’, ‘music and film’), by means of portrait concerts (Jonathan Harvey, Fausto Romitelli, Toshio Hosokawa and others) and with staged shows such as operas and video and dance productions. The fact that a sound engineer is a permanent member of the ensemble indicates that the inclusion of electronics is self-evident.
In collaboration with the Brussels Philharmonic Society and the Kaaitheater, Ictus gives a series of concerts every year, often with spoken commentary, targeted at a broad and varied public. Since 2003, Ictus has also been in residence at the Lille Opera House. Ictus has been on the stages of various large halls and renowned festivals in Europe and the United States, including Musica Strasbourg, the Witten Festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Festival d'Automne à Paris, Ars Musica, Royaumont, Milano Musica, Ultraschall, Villeneuve-lez-Avignon and Wien-Modern.
Ictus will perform several times during the Holland Festival 2010: in the programme revolving around Luciano Berio’s
Laborintus II, in
3Abschied by the Rosas dance ensemble, and in
Telegrams from the Nose, a production by the Holland Festival in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum.
The
Nederlands Kamerkoor (Netherlands Chamber Choir), founded in 1937 by the young conductor Felix de Nobel, is a full-time independent vocal ensemble that focuses on the a cappella repertoire from the early Middle Ages to the present. In previous seasons, the Nederlands Kamerkoor has granted various composition commissions, and new commissions to composers such as Peter-Jan Wagemans, Karin Rehnqvist, Elmer Schönberger and Sir Harrison Birtwistle are now being planned. World premieres of works by Sir John Tavener, James MacMillan, Edith Canat de Chizy, Gija Kancheli, Hans Kox, Birtwistle, Gerard Beljon, Karin Rehnqvist, Mauricio Kagel and Jan Vriend were enthusiastically received by the press. The NKK also provided a successful full-length programme with songs by Burt Bacharach, specially arranged by Bob Zimmerman for the NKK and ensemble. During the 2009 edition of the Holland Festival, the choir sang the opera
Aquarius by Karel Goeyvaerts, while a tour of the programme La voce femminile featuring music by female composers alone, met with praise in September 2009.
The NKK works with conductors who specialize in different periods of music. In 2005, Peter Dijkstra was chosen as the choir's regular guest conductor, while the Flemish early music specialist Paul Van Nevel became its honorary guest conductor. That same year, conductor Klaas Stok was appointed choir leader. The NKK also regularly works with the conductors Marcus Creed, Ed Spanjaard, Reinbert de Leeuw and Roland Hayrabedian.
The Nederlands Kamerkoor presents its own series of concerts in the Netherlands every year, and additionally performs at home and abroad with orchestras and ensembles such as the Nieuw Ensemble, Asko|Schönberg, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Nederlands Kamerorkest and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. To date, the NKK has put out some 70 CDs, various of which have received an Edison.