Ekstasis is a multi-media collaboration between Kaija Saariaho and Jean-Baptiste Barrière.  There are six pieces on the Blu-ray disk.  Three were written by Saariaho with the visual elements added later by her husband.  The Barrière works were conceived from the outset as multi-media pieces.

The three Saariaho pieces come first.  There’s Nocturne for solo violin which is the only piece that doesn’t include electronics.  It’s played by Allisa Neige Barrière and is a kind of meditation for extended violin techniques.  The video element is the violinist sort of semi superposed on a rippling pond.  It’s typical of all the visuals.  An image, often the player, is combined with another image, often, as here, of a landscape element.  The images merge and flicker in a sort of kaleidoscopic way.

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