Quijote duo in New Orleans - New Marigny Theater
Windmills - QUIJOTE DUO
ABOUT
Alonso Quijano, AKA Don Quijote, in Miguel de Cervantes’ novel plots against the intruders that are invading La Mancha. His otherworldly impetus and strong will sends him off into a lost cause endangering himself greatly. WINDMILLS is a program that pays tribute to all the real-life "Alonso Quijanos" that choose to dedicate their most valuable efforts to creating new works of music, often fighting all sorts of adversities, from financial hardships to biased public exposure and personal vulnerability. From Quijote Duo, we want to recognize and celebrate the courage and drive composers display in venturing themselves into sharing their gifts with the world so us performers and listeners can keep enjoying the thrill of new music.
IMPROVISATION by us, here and now
This is a very special occasion for us. Performing in New Orleans for the first time is an overwhelming experience filled with excitement, exuberant joy, provocation and incredibly stimulating. We want to pay tribute to you for being here and to this occasion by pour ourselves through our instruments in a complete improvisation.
LIMESTONE AND FELT by Caroline Shaw
Limestone & Felt presents two kinds of surfaces – essentially hard and soft. These are materials that can suggest place (a cathedral apse, or the inside of a wool hat), stature, function, and – for me – sound (reverberant or muted). In limestone & felt, the hocketing pizzicato and pealing motivic canons are part of a whimsical, mystical, generous world of sounds echoing and colliding in the imagined eaves of a gothic chapel. These are contrasted with the delicate, meticulous, and almost reverent placing of chords that, to our ears today, sound ancient and precious, like an antique jewel box. Ultimately, felt and limestone may represent two opposing ways we experience history and design our own present.
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PROXIMITY by Shawn Decker
Proximity is a work for generative computer software and string duo that was commissioned by, and written for the Quijote Duo. The piece relies both on the musician's ears as well as their improvisatory skills. The computer software generates tones for each musician, who then must attempt to match their pitch as closely as possible just by listening. The title Proximity refers to the various beating tones, rhythms, and sonic dissonance that resultwhen the performers pitch is close but not quite the same as the computer’s.. The performers are also presented with various additional possibilities for improvisation by a score that is produced on the comuter in real time. Every performance will be unique. The entire result is meant to be sonically ethereal.
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AVAILABLE STOPS by Igor Santos
available stops is a work that takes art of organ registrations—with all of its possibility for timbre variation—as a point of departure. This is heard in the constant change of color for the hocketing unison notes and figurations, as well as an extended “mixture" stops section, with its constant parallel motion voicing and orchestration. Finally the “organ" reference is almost literal in that I use performer vocalization as another kind of registration/color palette—a technique explored in much of my recent work. The music is written, with admiration, for the Quixote Duo, premiered at the 2021 EarTaxi Festival in Chicago.
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CRIMSONEANDO by Sixto Franco
A short piece inspired by the opening track of the Beat album by King Crimson. This track is defined by its polyrhythms. Crimsoning starts with a 5/8 gesture that serves as the accompaniment for a melody that varies between 7/8, 6/8 and 4/8.
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BUCOLICS by Manuel de Falla, siete canciones populares
Musical Paris was bubbling with things Spanish at the time Falla arrived. Debussy was composing Ibéria, Ravel was working on Rapsodie espagnole and L’heure espagnole, and Falla’s compatriot Albéniz had just completed the fourth book of his Iberia for piano. Using a combination of authentic and “retouched” folk melodies, Falla succeeded in elevating what were simple, popular tunes to a higher artistic level by crafting truly integrated and original piano accompaniments, bringing to life the infectious melodies and rhythms inherent in the folk songs. Nana is a brief Andalusian lullaby, which uses oriental modal inflections, placing it somewhere between E major and E minor.
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CALLE 92 by Astor PIazzolla
The Argentinian composer who revolutionized tango spent part of his life in New York in different occasions. In this tango, Piazzolla tries to reflect his experience living on the 92nd street.
AMERICAN HAIKU by Paul Wiancko
Growing up in California, Paul Wiancko’s Japanese American heritage became increasingly important to him as he grew both as a man and musician. Wiancko was enchanted with Appalachian music as well as Japanese folk music. His American Haiku is an attempt to reconcile these different esthetics. It offers it’s listener an elegant rapprochement of two cultures all the while delving into the emotional depths of the three-part Haiku in its three movements: I. Far away, II. In Transit, III. Home. Each movement brings with it percussive rhythms coupled with rich, spacious chords recalling vast, rugged mountain ranges. The blending of viola and cello also play a crucial role in the composition’s harmoniousness, with the instruments overlapping in range and texture. In many ways, American Haiku is a treatise on the life of Wiancko and his journey into his own roots, showing that the universal language of music is perhaps the clearest way to translate the depths of Haiku.