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A collaborative project with virtuoso cellist Frances-Marie Uitti and composer Andries van Rossem

July 4, 5 & 6, 2003, Wiebengahal, Maastricht, The Netherlands Presented by Stichting Intro, for more info call: (0) 43 325 05 11

The Wiebengahal was the first cast concrete building in Maastricht. The top floor, where the concert will take place, has a vaulted ceiling running the entire length of the building, about 40 meters (120 feet). The Long String Instrument installation will extend nearly the full length of the space. The range will extend 3 octaves, from about the G below the low open C on the cello to above the open A string on the violin.

Frances-Marie Uitti and Ellen Fullman will perform a series of structured pieces exploring the subtleties of extended harmony in just intonation. Composer Andries van Rossem will compose a solo work for Ellen Fullman's Long String Instrument.

About Frances-Marie Uitti
While Frances-Marie Uitti is very much at home with the classical repertoire, regularly performing works by Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, Debussy and the romantics, she is also considered one of the leading voices in contemporary music. Her performances have brought her into close musical contact with the prominent composers of our time including Iannis Xenakis, Luciano Berio, Morton Feldman, Elliott Carter, Franco Donatoni, Salvatore Sciarrino. She is the dedicatee of many works that have now become repertory standards by Jonathan Harvey, Luigi Nono, James Tenney, Per Norgaard, Giacinto Scelsi, Gyorgy Kurtag, Louis Andriessen, John Cage, Sylvano Bussotti.

Ms Uitti is the inventor of many techniques that extend the musical possibilities of the cello, including the design of resonators that amplify different tones and subharmonics, and the Two-Bow technique for which she is reknowned. By holding two bows in the right hand she can play the cello polyphonically accessing 4, 3, 2 or 1 strings in any combination. Using this technique the bows can create cross-articulations, accents, and simultaneous ponticello and tasto colorings as well as non-adjacent double and triple stops. Luigi Nono, Gyorgy Kurtag, Richard Barrett, Klarenz Barlow, Giacinto Scelsi, Jay Alan Yim, Jonathan Harvey, and many others have written works for her using this technique. In addition, she has designed a MIDI interface for her 1710 cello. She is having a 6- string midi cello with many original features built for her by luthier, Eric Jensen. Ms. Uitti programs in Max/MSP for these and other instruments.

Los Angeles Times: Layers of Sound: Cellist Frances-Marie Uitti delivers music that's bold and experimental. For Frances-Marie Uitti, the experimental instinct led her to a simple yet expansive gesture as a young cellist growing up in Chicago. She expanded her sound-producing potential by adding a second bow. The result, with more layers and niches of sound than we expect from one string instrument, is simultaneously earthy and unearthly. What seems a radical idea manifests itself in music of haunting beauty in Uitti's hands. Uitti conjures up a rich and ethereal atmosphere when she plays live. She paints with the thick palette of overtones that the cello is naturally endowed with, and tends to fill a room with wonder...

Village Voice: "But I did find two extraordinary individual Cage stylists at these concerts...and cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, who repeated her afternoon performance of "Etudes Boreales" on the Bowery Ensemble's evening program at Cage's request and not only played with the heat of a high-tension wire and unfailing control and beauty of tone, a virtuoso feat in itself, but also -- which is exactly what Cage wants -- as if each note were a new creation entirely unconnected to anything that had come before"

The Independent, Los Angeles: In a darkened room in Victoriaville, Quebec, two years ago, one woman, one cello, and two bows engaged in a mind-expanding, space-altering experiment. The audience got lost in the swirl of sound and the intensity of the textural moment, in the best possible way. Uitti funnels a deep and abstract musical sensibility through an extended technique, coaxing literal new life from her instrument. Hers is, simultaneously, a definitively physical aesthetic of music-making, but the end result- as with all great music-is metaphysical, hinting at a private world that no words or rationale can suffice in describing. The crowd from the Victo filed out of the performance in a slight daze, having glimpsed something beyond music...