Pulse Tide

Featuring Liam Hockley

Modern music meets historical setting for a unique concert experience to kick off the year’s concert series collaboration with the Vancouver International-Cultural Orchestra!

Tea and Cookies will be served at the end of the concert.

Ticket holders should arrive no later than 10 minutes before showtime to secure seats.
Seating is limited.

Program Details:

Pulse-Tide is a 50-minute set for basset horn and four-channel playback, curated to unfold as a single, evening-length concert experience. The four pieces expand in scale from a solo basset horn to a septet, gradually enveloping the audience in a shimmering world of acoustic and electronic sound. The program takes its name from Hockley’s album Pulse Tide, released on Aural Terrains and selected by The Wire as one of the Top 10 Modern Composition albums of 2024. This concert version reimagines works from the album for live performance.

The program begins in the jagged landscape of Ana-Maria Avram’s Penumbra, the solo basset horn tracing the spectral language that carries through the program. Through interference beating caused by close dissonances, Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas draws attention to the physical manifestation of sound physically. Thanos Chrysakis’ Egress—written for Liam Hockley in 2017 and receiving its world premiere performance tonight—is a dense, polyphonic piece for five basset horns that exploits the instrument’s extended range and rich multiphonics capabilities.

The cornerstone of the program is Horațiu Rădulescu’s Capricorn’s Nostalgic Crickets, an open-score work for seven identical woodwinds, heard here in a new realization for basset horns and electronics. The piece unfolds as a stream of 96 sound “events” spanning over five octaves of overlapping multiphonics, overtones, voices, and electronics. As each of these sonic events emerges from and returns to silence, the effect of a living, breathing body of sound is created: a hypnotic and trance-like “implacable DEEP CONTINUITY … a PULSE-TIDE of MUSIC and SILENCE.”

Artist Bio

Liam Hockley

A versatile musician for whom “alternative or avant-garde approaches to his instrument are only part of the everyday tool kit” (Georgia Straight), clarinetist Liam Hockley is a dedicatedadvocate for new and experimental music. Among other accolades, Liam holds an interpretation prize from the Stockhausen–Konzert und –Kurse Kürten. He has performed as a soloist or ensemble member on three continents, including recent concert engagements with Vancouver New Music, Salt New Music Festival and Symposium (Victoria), Neuztec (Victoria), Music on Main, KLANGRAUM (Düsseldorf), and NUNC (Evanston, IL). Liam’s debut album, Pulse Tide, was listed by The Wire as one of 2024’s top 10 Modern Composition releases. Liam has also recorded for Redshift and CMC Centrediscs and has published in The Clarinet and Foci Arts/Words. He maintains an active schedule of performances as a freelancer with ensembles in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, including the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra.

About VICO:

Since repertoire for the VICO’s unusual and diverse instrumentation does not already exist, creating new work is an integral component of all our programming. Developing new commissions (over 50 new Canadian works since 2001, and counting!) provides a necessary framework for bringing musicians and composers together to learn from each other, in a uniquely collaborative process. Since its inaugural performance in 2001, the VICO has developed and performed over 50 new intercultural pieces by ground-breaking Canadian composers.

Parking:

Limited street parking is available on Robson and in the West End. Parking spots are scarce in the neighbourhood, so give yourself some extra time or use public transportation. (Closest Skytrain station: Burrard. We are on the #5 Robson bus route).

DONATE & SUPPORT:

Donations collected go towards the continuation this Series and directly supports the artists we engage. You can support by donating HERE.