NMC Presents...Cacie Miller & Missing Piece: Subscendental Etudes

Can't make it in person? Watch the stream here: https://www.youtube.com/live/RjjT6EIEPaA?si=K6rLXmpQRKPwZ-Vg

Cacie Miller & Missing Piece perform “Subscendetal Etudes” — an evening-length piano trio combining conventional notation and multiple forms of indeterminacy by Ben Zucker, composed for Miller’s “Composing The Climate” project.

“They are, in other words, subscendent (moving toward relations) rather than transcendent (rising above relations). They do not pursue or pretend to absolute knowledge or language, let alone power. Instead they play; they care; they adapt; they hurt; they laugh.” - Hyposubjects (Timothy Morton & Dominic Boyer)
(Named in re: Liszt)
–the possibility of its performers to subscend and become less than the sum of the music’s parts in engaging with it, yet also so much more than the work stands to ever contain–
–the players navigate various forms of repetition, technically independent but always already in relation…how they proactively engage and alter with the material (others included) expands over the movements via the introduction and proliferation of written ‘strategies’--
Repetition is key here – it works highly unevenly, even creatively. It could be seen as a kind of ceaseless waste and overproduction; or consider a rich, other materiality of the relational potential through time and reconfiguration through listening.
The gradual progression of forms of iteration, inhabiting, noticing plot some sort of trajectory, or is simply a particular flow we attune to for the time being. Either way works.
There is a lot of trouble to stay with here.


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New Music Chicago Presents brings a new body of repertoire and innovative performances to listeners in Chicago and beyond while also exposing new audiences to the world-class new music being created among Chicago musicians, in partnership with Experimental Sound Studio and supporters including the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, Illinois Arts Council, Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Alice M Ditson Fund, the Aaron Copland Fund For New Music, Amphion Foundation, and individual donors. For more information about NMCP, go to https://www.newmusicchicago.org/new-music-chicago-presents/