February 8 2015

We asked Nicole Lizée to give us a sneak peak at what she has in store for the new CSQ commission. Her response: The Glo-Fi String Quartet.

“The reinterpretation of genres as a premise for a ‘classical’ or contemporary music work has been central to my aesthetic for a number of years” says Ms. Lizée. “Disassembling a genre or artistic movement to study its schematics and circuitry, and reassembling or re-contextualizing my findings stirs up the imagination and leads me to forge new paths and develop new sounds. While I have applied this process to several multimedia works there’s a certain thrill in emulating these characteristics or genre-specific identifiers using a purely acoustic ensemble. Turntablism, glitch, psychedelia are a few of the art forms that I have emulated using an acoustic ensemble. With this new work for string quartet I will focus on the very closely related phenomena known as hauntology, hypnagogia and glo-fi – underground artistic movements that have intrigued me since their emergence in sonic form several years ago. The work will essentially treat the quartet as though it’s being played back on a defective and worn tape – Side A of a long forgotten, but well-loved and oft played, cassette.”

Visit www.nicolelizee.com to learn more about this composer.

Check back in April for another composer spotlight!