New York Philharmonic Presents: MUTED
Monica Germino, violin & voice
8:30pm doors • 9pm show
About
Dubbed “the quietest violin piece ever written,” MUTED was composed by Louis Andriessen, Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe for Monica Germino after she was diagnosed with high sensitivity to sound. Experience this work for violin, “whisperviolin,” voice, and light design as it was meant to be heard — by small groups of listeners in an intimate space. Limited availability.
Co-presented with the New York Philharmonic
Part of the New York Philharmonic’s The Art of Andriessen, a series celebrating Louis Andriessen’s rich musical contributions, and explores a multitude of his works and influences.
Photo credit: Anne Reinke
Tickets
The Artists
Ms. Germino is challenging the violin’s conventional limits by creating innovative programs with a constantly expanding, eclectic repertoire. Among the many composers who have written works for her are Louis Andriessen, Donnacha Dennehy, David Dramm, Heiner Goebbels, Michael Gordon, Annie Gosfield, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli, Jacob TV, Julia Wolfe, and Robert Zuidam. She has also worked with Michel van der Aa, Martin Bresnick, John Cage, Alvin Curran, Michael Daugherty, György Ligeti, and Christian Wolff. She often sings and plays simultaneously, and has commissioned a significant repertoire for singing violinists.
A versatile artist, Ms. Germino has performed with Europe’s leading dance and theater companies, and has smashed barriers in collaborations with choreographer Nanine Linning, singer Cristina Zavalloni, pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama, and many others. She co-founded the international ensemble ELECTRA and now serves as its artistic advisor. Together with sound designer Frank van der Weij, she has revealed new possibilities for solo violin and presented multimedia programs worldwide; the duo has worked with adventurous composers, often using amplification, effects, and intense distortion to alter, fracture, and multiply the voice of the violin. Ms. Germino’s latest solo program, MUTED, is a collective composition by Gordon, Lang, Wolfe, and Andriessen that features violin, voice, frame violins, whisperviolin, hundreds of mutes, and light design.
Monica Germino holds diplomas with honors from New England Conservatory and Yale University, and she won a Frank Huntington Beebe Grant to study at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. She plays a Joannes Baptista Ceruti violin, on permanent loan from the Elise Mathilde Foundation, along with a custom-made Violectra and an assortment of unusual violins.
Floriaan Ganzevoort is a lighting designer for theater, music, dance, and spaces of all kinds. He graduated in Theatre Studies at the University of Amsterdam on the subject “Light as a dramaturgical means.” Since 2000 he has designed lighting for a variety of disciplines. Because of his dramaturgical background, the light he creates is always strongly connected to the content of the piece. He specializes in the sequence as well as the timing of light images.
In 2009 Mr. Ganzevoort founded the Theatermachine collective: a team of four lighting designers who work closely together and share their different areas of expertise; their designs are distinctive through the way they treat light both as an independent agent and as an inextricable part of the story.
Mr. Ganzevoort has worked with Michel van der Aa for Dutch National Opera & Ballet; Saskia Boddeke and Peter Greenaway for Teatro Regio Parma; and Ulrike Quade Company for Stadttheater Basel, Silbersee for Ruhrtriennale, among others. He worked as technical coordinator for the choreographers Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten, was sound and light operator on international tours, and created light designs for the dance company. Floriaan Ganzevoort also designs independent light art in the public space. His work was shown in the city center of Amsterdam in three editions of the Amsterdam Light Festival.
