Sound @ Le Lab: Ecce Ensemble performs Philippe Hurel & John Aylward

As the 2016-17 contemporary music ensemble-in-residence at Cambridge’s Le Laboratoire, the Ecce Ensemble completes its French-inspired season with a diverse program juxtaposing American and French music. The concert features chamber performances of masterworks by French composer Philippe Hurel and recent works by American composer John Aylward. The event is also a program of memorials, featuring two of Hurel's significant homage works, Pour Luigi and In Memoriam a Berio, and the premiere of Aylward’s Angelus Novus, an homage to Lee Hyla. Inspired by Le Lab’s current exhibit, Life in Picoseconds, the evening’s repertoire is an intersection of French and American art.

The music of Philippe Hurel (b.1955) eschews labels as it straddles spectral music with appropriations of American Jazz and African rhythmic systems. Hurel's eclectic rhythmic language provides a kind of vitality to his interpretations of spectral music, an aesthetic very much rooted contemporary French culture. Pour Luigi (1994) is an exemplary work by Hurel in that it gives a strong impression of his unique perspective and contribution to French spectral music. Ritornella — In Memoriam Luciano Berio (2004) is in some ways a more intimate look at Hurel's voice, but also a more virtuosic one in which Hurel takes advantage of the nimble nature of the flute and piano to create fleeting evocative gestures.

​Described by The Boston Globe as “a composer of wide intellectual curiosity,” John Aylward (b.1980) summons “textures of efficient richness, delicate and deep all at once.” His latest work is Angelus Novus (2017), is an homage to former teacher Lee Hyla (1952-2014), who was a significant influence on Aylward. It is a large-scale, multimedia piece designed in collaboration with choreographer Colin Gee, graphic artist Steven Taylor, and the French Artist Collective Millimetre. Also on the program is Aylward’s Daedalus (2014), a complementary work responding to ancient and modern concepts of machine, technology and industry.

doors 6:30pm / show 7pm