At the limits of infinite darkness...

Curated by composer Ken Ueno, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble's Music & Moving Image is a project that emerged as a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration, focusing on the interstices between sounds and visuals. The first performance of this project, Spectra, featuring the Japanese video performer / artist Ikue Mori was an improvisation based performance event. This time, the spotlight is on the Italian contemporary maester, Salvatore Sciarrino, whose music verges on the inaudible, and the most fragile musical fibres could morph into monstrously vulgar sound masses within the span of seconds. At times, the music is calm as the open sea; at others, as volatile as a cataclysmic Supernova.

Taking central stage in this performance is Sciarrino's groundbreaking monodrama Infinito Nero (1998), curiously subtitled 'ecstasy in an act', re-enacting and reinterpreting the miraculous visions - or spasmodic outbursts - of the controversial Catholic saint, Mary Magdalene. The work features signature compositional traits that are unmistakably Sciarrinos: use of extreme high registers in string harmonics, extended periods of pseudo non-development, prolonged scale of musical developments...

Preluding this remarkable work is Sciarrino's solo work for viola, aptly titled Ai limiti della notte ("at the limits of the night"), where the Ensemble's artistic director, William Lane, subtly and gently woos the public in attendance into the mesmerising and enigmatic sound world of Sciarrino's music.

Link to Infinito Nero's event page:

www.hongkognewmusic.org/infinito-nero