Sounding Buildings live: Lewis Glucksman Modern Art Gallery, Ireland
Cork, Ireland October 2005
Investigations III
Rajesh Mehta: Sounding Buildings
8 October, 7 pm (live!)
9 October 1 pm
Public conversation with the artist Rajesh Mehta
and curator René Zechlin
Lewis Glucksman Gallery
University College Cork, Ireland
http://www.glucksman.org
info@glucksman.org
SOUNDING BUILDINGS
In his work as a composer and musician, Rajesh Mehta is interested in exploring the relationship between architecture and music. Having received international critical acclaim as a "radically inventive musician", performing with his self-designed "Hybrid Trumpet" and microtonal slide trumpet, Rajesh Mehta developed the ongoing project Sounding Buildings. In Sounding Buildings, Mehta, the "musical architect", explores the manifold relationships between architecture, acoustics and music and aims to draw out the metaphysical soul of each building he studies.
As a part of the Sounding Buildings series, Mehta created a new piece for the award-winning architecture of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. The performance is site specific - it is the first time Mehta's idea of a musical architecture is performed in its actual architectural setting. Mehta's spatial music composition will simultaneously sound the various floors of the entire building, creating a hybrid between the building's architecture and its navigational and acoustical properties, also incorporating the inspirational poem "Personal Helicon" by Seamus Heaney.
Rajesh Mehta will perform the composition, together with international and local musicians and sound artists, using a graphical notation system. The performance involves members of the cORKAstra - an ensemble of adventurous Cork-based musicians and sound artists, which he founded during his Artist-in-Residency in Cork during 2004. The performers will include Mick O'Shea, Danny McCarthy, Giordai ua Laoghaire, Keith O'Brien, Linda Buckley, Irene Buckley, Barbara Friederichsen, and Eunice Martins.
RAJESH MEHTA
Rajesh Mehta (born in Calcutta, India in 1964) was raised in the U.S., where he began trumpet and music studies at the age of 10. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in Humanities and Engineering. While working in the field of Engineering Acoustics, he began composition studies at Mills College Contemporary Music Center under the composer Anthony Braxton. He has been active as a professional musician in Europe since 1991 - first based in Amsterdam and currently in Berlin. He has toured and recorded internationally with his various musical groups and has collaborated extensively with contemporary dance, theatre and architecture performances and institutes. His interdisciplinary project "Sounding Buildings" resulted in a DVD production at M.I.T as well as a number of lectures at the invitation of Architect Daniel Libeskind. Mehta received a Residency Award in Cork, Ireland in 2004 and, in 2005, a Senior Performing and Creative Arts Fellowship Award from the American Institute of Indian Studies (University of Chicago) in recognition of his project "Innovative Music Meetings: Creative Collaborations with Carnatic Music".
INVESTIGATIONS
Rajesh Mehta: Sounding Buildings is the third part of Investigations, a series of contemporary art projects curated by René Zechlin at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. The series explores the intersections between the art institution and its university environment from artistic, architectural, social and academic perspectives. Each project offers a different and sometimes unexpected way to approach art. All of the selected artists have a strong relation to site-specific work although they operate in very different modes of artistic expression, ranging from performance, interdisciplinary work to installation. The series will continue in 2006.
For further information and images please contact:
René Zechlin, Curator, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, Ireland
T. +353 21 4901822 F. +353 21 4901823 E. r.zechlin@ucc.ie
