Mark your calendars: On Feb. 17, The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts hosts an evening celebrating the works of 20th century avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) with performances by students from the CalArts community. The CalArts Stockhausen Festival will feature rarely performed works performed throughout the CalArts campus, including the U.S. Premiere of a version of Kathinka’s Gesang.
Festival producer and flutist Jennifer Ingertila (Music MFA 15) traveled to Germany to study with the Dutch flutist who premiered the work in 1983, Kathinka Pasveer. Pasveer worked extensively with the late Stockhausen. (The composer passed away seven years ago this December.)
Kathinka’s Gesang is a piece for flute and six percussionists from the second scene of Stockhausen’s opera Saturday from Light, a musical and theatrical reconfiguration of the texts and rituals within the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The piece features Ingertila on flute, a “shamanistic celebrant,” and CalArts percussionists dressed in “magical” instruments made of junk percussion, whistles and other unique objects of their choosing.
The festival organizers will guide the audience to performances of Stockhausen’s Trumpetent and Sternklang. Andreas Levisianos, a DMA candidate and conductor, will direct both works. Ingertila describes Trumpetent as a work for four trumpet players who perform inside a white tent, while Sternklang (Star-Sound) is an outdoor work to be performed under the night sky by 21 musicians.
The festival’s full schedule will be released in February.