One Hundred Years is built on the encoding of the days of all solar eclipses, which took (and will take) place from 1945 to 2045. Composed during this extraordinary year we are experiencing, 2020, the piece scans the past 75 years, from the beginning of the so-called ‘atomic age’, and looks forward 25 years to 2045, the date given by Ray Kurzweil, when technological ‘singularity’ will supposedly occur – the moment when artifical intelligence will surpass human intelligence. Historian Paul Rogers writes of this passage of time in his essay: A Century On The Edge: From Cold War To Hot World: 1945-2045 – marks a period when the human community faces the choice of taking decisions that lead to immense self-destruction or of acquiring the wisdom to handle its own destructive capabilities.

The piece is not meant as a narrative comment on specific dates or years that are named, rather a contemplation on the passing of time. How we look to the past and how we look to the future. As we hear dates and years gone by, we might associate them with historical or personal memories, and perhaps feel melancholic about a lost age, or identify with a particular decade. Hearing dates in the future, might give rise to uncertainty and fear, but might also evoke feelings of excitement and hope.

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Website NPO 4

Score at the Donemus Catalogue

Composer Brendan Faegre discovered that the metal parts in the sculpture Early Bird by Joep van Lieshout produce unique sounds.

Brendan Faegre:

While walking through Joep van Lieshout’s atelier, looking for musical possibilities in his sculptures, I stumbled upon his Early Bird from 2015. A few taps on the surface and I was enchanted. Each of its 100 flat metal surfaces rings out a clear, unique pitch. It’s like a beautiful, bizarrely-tuned, three-dimensional, 4-meter tall vibraphone.
The percussionists play the role of three gods, descending from the heavens to help guide the four terribly lost Early Birds. Each bird believes itself to be a solitary genius, forging ahead in its own direction while climbing the rusty corporate ladder of late-stage capitalism. The birds are unaware of the fact that we are all welded together.
As the piece unfolds, the gods grow weary, finding the Early Birds completely unreceptive to their advice. The gods eventually resign and then die, as the humans kill their own gods by killing themselves (the death of the dreamer kills the dreamed).

Brendan Faegre has been praised by the New York Times as ‘especially empowering’ and ‘darkly exhilarating’. Composer and drummer Brendan Faegre creates music that brings together the various traditions that formed him. From his ‘education’ as a rock drummer comes a fascination for the beauty of distortion, imperfection, and improvisation. His months in India as a tabla student led to music that combines a strict intellectual approach with physical expressiveness. And his study of spectromorphology grew into an obsession with the human experience of sound.

Early Bird at the Donemus Catalogue

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Tickets for the performances in October

Score in the Donemus Catalogue