CAIRNS
A tale of architects
CAIRNS is an original transdisciplinary creation for saxophone quartet an stage performer. It is the second part of "Waiting for Amon", a trilogy opened with “Glitch”, another pluridisciplinary performance, performed in Theater der Künste Zürich in 2016. CAIRNS was premiered in the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in September 2017 by the Toni Saxophone Quartet (Charles Ng, Amit Dubester, Valentine Michaud, Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos) and Emmanuel Michaud.
Shapes and Spaces
The performance is based on a minimal music soundtrack originally written or adapted for saxophone quartet by the composers Philipp Glass, Steve Reich and Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos. Masterpieces of minimal music, these pieces reaches the very essence of the style by using a very reduced material constantly slightly evolving. The construction of the music matches perfectly with the scenography made of bricks of white wooden blocks. CAIRNS explores the relationship between music and architecture through opposite concepts: Order / Chaos ; Geometric / Organic. These opposites are to be seen in the evolution of the scenography, but also musically and through the musicians and performer movements. At the beginning mainly horizontal, the setting evolves as the performer moves the bricks, shaping the space on stage, building an abstract and dreamy architecture, rising up to 3 or 4 meters. As the show evolves, the constructions slides from a strict construction process to a more organic one, the music also alternating with more improvised parts.