Pleiades

Iannis Xenakis  ·  Percussion sextet  ·  2015 and 2016

Xenakis wrote Pleiades for six percussionists in 1978 and built one of its movements, Métaux, on an instrument he had invented for the purpose — the sixxen, six metal instruments deliberately tuned so that no two players agree. The beating between them is the piece.

I have played the full seventy-minute sextet twice in two very different rooms: with Chamber Cartel at the Goat Farm Arts Center in Atlanta in October 2015, and at Ijams Nature Center for the Nief-Norf Summer Festival in June 2016. Atlanta NPR covered the Goat Farm performance on WABE’s City Lights.

The Atlanta run also included a lecture and performance of Métaux at Georgia Perimeter College.

Composer

Iannis Xenakis

Forces

Percussion sextet

Duration

About 70 minutes

October 2015

Chamber Cartel · The Goat Farm Arts Center, Atlanta

June 2016

Nief-Norf Summer Festival · Ijams Nature Center, Knoxville

Broadcast

City Lights, 90.1FM WABE (Atlanta NPR), October 2015

Photographs to be added.