The Well Tempered Circle/ Four Studies in Spatialised Phasing (2018)
Humans have been speaking for about 100,000 years, but making music for more than 200,000 years. The very first music was rhythmic in nature: we banged stones together and listened to the rhythm of our hearts as we looked up at the monochrome blue of Eden’s sky. The heartbeat has a very specific rhythm: 60 heartbeats per minute is a form of human invariable. This human invariable, across all cultures, is a subject close to Stefaan Quix’ own heart. He worked on similar phenomena in previous work: primary colours, the octave and the universal rhythm are all physiological phenomena, in fact, that have repercussions for culture.
In 'The Well Tempered Circle’, Quix has created a performance about these first, ‘primitive’ beats and their technological evolution, performed by 8 percussionists surrounding the audience. The percussionists are synchronised through 8 sets of headphones, each of which has an individual click track that differs from all the others. Although the resulting sound landscape is composed, it is reminiscent of a swarm of grasshoppers on a hot day in the south. Take your place in the middle of a circle of sound, close your eyes and allow yourself to be fully immersed in a spatialised sound universe.
Website: www.quix.org - www.champdaction.be - vnkpercussion.com
Concept, music and musical director: Stefaan Quix The Quixtet are: Aya Suzuki, Rubén Martines, Birgit Eecloo, Wim Pelgrims, Jacob Vanneste, Simon Florin, Jelle Van Dooren, Simon Decraene, Andrés Navarro Garcia, Jelle Proost. Producer: ChampdAction Coproducer: deSingel, Festival of Flanders Kortrijk, Q-O2 Stefaan Quix is an artist in residence with the development and production platform ChampdAction.Thanks to VNK Percussion
With festivalpas.
