Program:

d. 60mins

According to the Hour - Harriet Steinke (2024)

Alice Down the Black Hole - Olive Køppe (2023)

to hold the sun in the palm of your hand - Arjan Singh (2024)

Portal - Ferdinand Schwarz (2022)

Additional Information:

to hold the sun in the palm of your hand by Arjan Singh

Program Note:
In January I was hiking in the hills near Berkeley when I met a magnificent tree positioned on an east-ward facing
slope. This tree had 6 trunks emerging from its initial stem in a way that reminded me of fingers reaching up to
grasp hold of something. As I came up to this tree, the sun was just about to set past the slope but had temporarily
positioned itself perfectly in between the tree fingers, making it appear as if the tree hand was holding a small but
bright ball of light. The sight was beautiful. The sun seemed so small in relation to this tree that had grabbed hold of
it, but only for an instant. As long as it took me to admire how such an allignment flipped my of the marvelous
heavenly body of the sun and the humble tree, one of many in a forest populated with millions, the sun had started to
dip beyond the slope and only the memory of this experience remained. This piece is a tribute to those moments
when forces beyond our reach naturally bring unattached elements from the periphery into focus, aligning them in a
way that brings us new perspectives, and producing a temporary moment of clarity.
–Arjan Singh

According to the Hour- Harriet Steinke
Written for AREPO as part of the 2024 Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, this piece unfolds in sustained drone, with
fragments of voice and interwoven melody. Its soundworld evokes the pull of midnight tides—patterns of waves
rising and falling—while a slow, expansive melody emerges gradually from a single tone.
Alice Down the Black Hole: (O. Køppe) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NSfR9uAvxk

Program Note
"Alice Down the Black Hole is an audiovisual work for 4 musicians and video. Based on clips from film versions of
Alice in Wonderland from 1903-1915, this work presents a fantasy of Alice's journey into a black hole. The music
starts as a faint and airy shadow, but as the work progresses, the instruments emerge both individually and
collectively. Sounds and lines are established, interrupted, stretched, bent and woven in and out of each other until
Alice reaches the bottom - if there is a bottom.
" (O. Køppe)

Portal- Ferdinand Schwarz
For four players and their voices, Portal is a cell-based work that cultivates constant interaction among performers
while sustaining an intense, sculpturesque focus. The piece forms a swarm-like structure—not seeking forward
progress, but instead revealing the full range of possibilities contained within the given material.

AREPO, [AH-reh-poh] made up of cellist and vocalist Elizabeth Kate (she/her), guitarist Marco Slaviero (he/him), accordionist Noël Rubli (he/him), and clarinetist Madara Eleonora Mežale (she/her) formed as a contemporary music group in 2022. Though conventional in number, AREPO embraces their unconventionality in quartet instrumentation as they believe disruption to the expected is vital for the future of music. By breaking standard instrumentation, using their voices, their bodies, and playing works by composers of marginalized communities, AREPO aims to set a new standard for what a 21st century quartet concert can entail.