26 Nov 2019

Michael NORRIS: dirty pixels

From Music Alive, 8:04 pm on 26 November 2019

Purity becomes rough and ragged.

Performed by NZTrio: Amalia Hall (violin), Ashley Brown (cello), Somi Kim (piano)

NZTrio - Somi Kim, Amalia Hall, Ashley Brown

NZTrio - Somi Kim, Amalia Hall, Ashley Brown Photo: Tai Nelson/NZTrio

Michael Norris was inspired to write 'dirty pixels' by an exhibition of the same name at the Adam Art Gallery, and by an "unremittingly wild and preposterous" work by Wolfgang Rihm, 'Jagden und Formen'.

He writes: "I became interested in the characteristics of roughness and raggedness, and in how a 'pure' conceptual scheme, such as the quite systematic construction I had formulated prior to starting this piece, became 'dirtied' by intuition, by the exigencies of the material, and by the reality of having it performed."

'dirty pixels' was commissioned in 2003 by NZTrio.

Recorded by RNZ in the Loft at Q Theatre, Auckland, 14 July 2019
Producer: Tim Dodd; Engineer: Adrian Hollay