Tetuzi Akiyama (Japan) - acoustic guitar
Jozef van Wissem (Holland) - renaissance lute
YOU KNOW YOU WANNA GO TO A FREE CONCERT WITH A RENAISSANCE LUTE!!!
When: Wednesday, January 30 , 2008 at 8 pm
Where: A site-specific performance at
The Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum
4011 Yupon at Branard, Houston, TX (map)
Tickets: The concert is free of charge
Nameless Sound and The Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, in cooperation with The Menil Collection, presents:
Tetuzi Akiyama (Japan) - acoustic guitar
Jozef van Wissem (Holland) - renaissance lute
An artist of starkly contrasting styles, Tetuzi Akiyama gained international recognition as a member of Tokyo's "onkyo" scene of improvisers in the late 1990s. A groundbreaking and highly influential group, the onkyo musicians are known for zen-like subtlety, quietness and a remarkable use of silence. Akiyama's music can have these qualities, but his connections to blues and folk have always been clear. His acoustic performances are delicate, beautiful and expressive, often sounding like an intersection between country blues and traditional Japanese music.
Jozef van Wissem probably plays the most unlikely instrument in the world of contemporary improvised music: the Renaissance lute. He has accomplished the strange feat of bridging the idiom of seventeenth century lute literature and twenty-first century free improvisation. Van Wissem has largely stayed faithful to the particular timbre, resonance and playing technique of the lute. Van Wissem first came to be noticed a few years ago because of his conceptual approach to Renaissance lute music: he deconstructed existing compositions, for instance, by playing them backwards. He also composed his own pieces for lute, using palindromes and mirrored structures. His music therefore does not have a traditional linear progression, nor does it lead to a climax; rather, it stays at the same level of intensity. His music is quiet. It doesn't so much demand concentrated listening, but it brings the listener into a state of concentrated listening—an aspect that makes Van Wissem a natural partner to Akiyama's zen-like blues.
The Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum was opened in February 1997. Intimate in scale, the Chapel Museum is the repository in the United States for the only intact Byzantine frescoes in the entire western hemisphere. These masterworks from the 13th century—a dome and an apse—were stolen out of a chapel near Lysi in the Turkish occupied section of Cyprus in the 1980s, cut into pieces and smuggled off the island by thieves prepared to sell them piece by piece. The fresco fragments were rescued from the thieves by The Menil Foundation with the knowledge and approval of the Church of Cyprus, the rightful owner of the frescoes. The Menil Foundation then funded a painstaking two-year restoration of the paintings. Numerous private donors helped fund the construction of the Chapel Museum, which combines rough stone, opaque glass and rich woods to extraordinarily spiritual effect. The Church of Cyprus is allowing a long-term loan of the frescoes in the building designed especially for them by architect François de Menil.
For more information on The Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, go to:
www.menil.org/byzantine.html
Jozef van Wissem (Holland) - renaissance lute
YOU KNOW YOU WANNA GO TO A FREE CONCERT WITH A RENAISSANCE LUTE!!!
When: Wednesday, January 30 , 2008 at 8 pm
Where: A site-specific performance at
The Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum
4011 Yupon at Branard, Houston, TX (map)
Tickets: The concert is free of charge
Nameless Sound and The Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, in cooperation with The Menil Collection, presents:
Tetuzi Akiyama (Japan) - acoustic guitar
Jozef van Wissem (Holland) - renaissance lute
An artist of starkly contrasting styles, Tetuzi Akiyama gained international recognition as a member of Tokyo's "onkyo" scene of improvisers in the late 1990s. A groundbreaking and highly influential group, the onkyo musicians are known for zen-like subtlety, quietness and a remarkable use of silence. Akiyama's music can have these qualities, but his connections to blues and folk have always been clear. His acoustic performances are delicate, beautiful and expressive, often sounding like an intersection between country blues and traditional Japanese music.
Jozef van Wissem probably plays the most unlikely instrument in the world of contemporary improvised music: the Renaissance lute. He has accomplished the strange feat of bridging the idiom of seventeenth century lute literature and twenty-first century free improvisation. Van Wissem has largely stayed faithful to the particular timbre, resonance and playing technique of the lute. Van Wissem first came to be noticed a few years ago because of his conceptual approach to Renaissance lute music: he deconstructed existing compositions, for instance, by playing them backwards. He also composed his own pieces for lute, using palindromes and mirrored structures. His music therefore does not have a traditional linear progression, nor does it lead to a climax; rather, it stays at the same level of intensity. His music is quiet. It doesn't so much demand concentrated listening, but it brings the listener into a state of concentrated listening—an aspect that makes Van Wissem a natural partner to Akiyama's zen-like blues.
The Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum was opened in February 1997. Intimate in scale, the Chapel Museum is the repository in the United States for the only intact Byzantine frescoes in the entire western hemisphere. These masterworks from the 13th century—a dome and an apse—were stolen out of a chapel near Lysi in the Turkish occupied section of Cyprus in the 1980s, cut into pieces and smuggled off the island by thieves prepared to sell them piece by piece. The fresco fragments were rescued from the thieves by The Menil Foundation with the knowledge and approval of the Church of Cyprus, the rightful owner of the frescoes. The Menil Foundation then funded a painstaking two-year restoration of the paintings. Numerous private donors helped fund the construction of the Chapel Museum, which combines rough stone, opaque glass and rich woods to extraordinarily spiritual effect. The Church of Cyprus is allowing a long-term loan of the frescoes in the building designed especially for them by architect François de Menil.
For more information on The Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, go to:
www.menil.org/byzantine.html
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