Friday, 16 December 2022, 8 pm

NEW YORK CITY LIFE - Concert Ensemble Diagonal
NEW: At Gare du Nord

Free admission

New York City Life is the name of the programme of the "Ensemble Diagonal" of the Hochschule für Musik, conducted by Baldur Brönnimann. City Life is also the title of the ensemble piece by New York minimal music pioneer Steve Reich. A pulsating "setting to music" of the city, played by 20 musicians, with sounds of the subway, the taxis, the street life of New York in the 90s. The overture of the programme is the classic Octandre by Edgar Varèse from 1923, almost a hundred years old and still fresh and electrifying. Another large, extremely colourful ensemble piece completes the programme: Légendes Urbaines by the French spectralist Tristan Murail, who was a professor at Columbia University for many years. This sound walk visits a wide variety of places in New York City, modelled on Mussorgsky's Museum Promenade.

Ensemble Diagonal for contemporary music of the Hochschule für Musik Basel
Conductor: Baldur Brönnimann
Works by Edgar Varèse, Steve Reich, Tristan Murail