'Children of the Otter' Project

Projects
Tuesday, 25 October 2011 04:00

 

‘Children of the Otter’ is the brightest ethno-music project within the ‘Made in Perm’ series.

‘Children of the Otter’ is a composition by the renowned Moscow-based experimentalist Vladimir Martynov for two musically unique performing groups: the Tuvan world music quartet Huun Huur Tu and the Russian chamber music ensemble Opus Posth. directed by Tatyana Grindenko. The work, which also includes vocal parts for mixed choir (performed by Perm Choir Mlada conducted by Olga Vyguzova), is based on archaic Siberian folklore, in which the otter is worshipped as the mother of all people. ‘Children of the Otter’ seamlessly blends ancient Tuvan sounds with Vladimir Martynov’s original score. In the composer’s words, the work “aims to provide listeners with a path to immersing themselves in the ever-existing stream of Music.

"Vladimir Martynov, sitting in the depth of the stage at the piano, snatches from the ages’ dark and the chaos of ancient harmonies the melodic riffs and fragments, which are capable of operating in the contemporary music field. It's almost psychedelic experience. The composer blends in the ‘Children of the Otter’ the Huun-Huur-Tu compositions with repetitive and hypnotic phrases of strings, when the choir, overcomes age-old burden of "academic" singing heritage and shouts syllables of Khlebnikov". Kommersant

"The projects as ‘Children of the Otter’ help to break the conventional framework and to make a new step in the development (of music)". TVRussia - theCulture

Renowned pianist and composer Anton Batagov said that ‘Children of the Otter’ is the most powerful work in the contemporary music since the Steve Reich's ‘Different Trains’, since 1988. "I sincerely believe that the ‘Otter’ at first the best work of Volodya, and secondly the most important event in the past 20 years. Perhaps, it might be compared only with ‘Kundun’ by Glass and ‘OVO’ by Gabriel ... But the ‘Otter’ is stronger and shriller"

Links:

http://www.hhtmusic.com/childrenoftheotter.html

Tour to Poland:

http://www.culture.pl/

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