The CoroDelantal conducted by Sonia Megías performs this evening at the International Institute of Madrid a vocal concert of minimalist music.
Today, Monday 19 June, at 19:30, the International Institute of Madrid (Miguel Ángel, 8) offers a concert entitled Maximal Voices: A Tribute to American Minimalism, in which the CoroDelantal, directed by the Spanish composer Sonia Megías (Almansa, 1982), will offer a programme of pieces composed by first-generation American minimalist composers, such as Pauline Oliveros (Wind Horse and Deep Listening Exercise) and Steve Reich (Clapping Music), and post-minimalists, such as Simon Fink (Infectious), Athena Corcoran (Lune) and Kevin Salchert (Silence, So Tender), as well as several pieces by Megías herself composed under the influence of American minimal music (The Time in a Thread, Sainals and Nameni), which she explored in depth between 2010 and 2012, on a Fulbright scholarship in New York for a Master’s degree in Music Theory and Composition.
It was there, too, in New York, where Megías founded in 2011 the CoroDelantal, a formation for vocal experimentation with which she has continued to work, first in Madrid, since the end of 2012, and later in Alicante. Directed by the composer, it works as a laboratory for setting up rare scores and developing collective performances situated on horseback between different artistic disciplines. Wind Horse, by Pauline Oliveros, is precisely one of the pieces that the choir has performed the most, using a Buddhist mandala (a symbolic and ritual representation of the macrocosm and the microcosm) as a kind of map for organizing and creating the performance. In her own writings about “deep listening”, Oliveros explained how it works: “From the center circle marked Listen each individual performer coses her own optional pathways, returning to the center circle at any time. The length of time spent on any circle could be as little as a confortable breath of many breaths. The total performance time aproxímate and may be pre-determined or not”.