If there is one term with which the name Christian Wolff is most associated, it is indeterminacy. Fittingly, the composer isn’t quite sure what to expect from the portrait concert »Metal & Breath« that will open this year’s Month of Contemporary Music, as he tells us via Zoom from his New York City home. The programme includes pieces written between 1968 and this year, since Wolff specifically wrote a new composition to be performed by the brass ensemble Zinc & Copper and his long-time collaborator Robyn Schulkowsky. Wolff discussed the political motifs in his music, working with microtonal ideas, and the dialogue between a score and the performers with field notes editor Kristoffer Cornils.
Whose idea was this concert originally?
Well, it wasn’t mine! (laughs)
It was probably Robin Hayward and Robyn Schulkowsky who came up with
it. They thought it would be nice if I wrote a piece for them and then
that grew into the idea of doing a concert. For a moment there was talk
of doing a 90th birthday concert—which is actually next year, but why
wait? (laughs)
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