This year’s 21C Festival opened last night at Koerner Hall with Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say performing some of his works with the help of a few friends.  It was a pretty varied evening considering all the works were by one person.  The opening pieces Gezi Park 2 and Gezi Park 3 are reflections on the Gezi Park protests of 2013.  The first is for solo piano and is by turns dramatic and meditative.  It uses a fair amount of extended piano technique and is highly virtuosic with great rhythmic complexity.  In the second piece the composer was joined by a string quartet (Scott and Lara St. John – violins, Barry Scxhiffman – viola and Winona Zelenka – cello) and mezzo-soprano Beste Kalender.  This work was both expressive and dramatic building on the musical language of the first piece with the additional textures of the strings (more extended technique) and a lot of rather beautiful vocalise from Beste.  It’s an impressive piece.

Continue reading →