Moody Performance Hall 4-11-2018 @ 7:30 PM
Tickets:  theMPAC.com

Join us April 11 at 7:30pm in Moody Performance Hall to experience UNT faculty composer Joseph Klein’s Canetti-menagerie: a surreal soiree, a collection of solo and chamber performances depicting seven characters from Nobel Prize winning author Elias Canetti’s book Earwitness: Fifty Characters. These varied and eccentric personae come to life through haunting musical performances by UNT faculty and guest artists, dramatic visualizations by local artist Jessica Leza and readings from Canetti’s insightful and ironic studies of human behavior.

Composed in March 2015, Canetti-menagerie is a semi-improvisational open-form chamber work for five to eight performers, based on the composer’s collection of solo works, Character Studies after Elias Canetti, which is in turn based on in Canetti's 1974 book Der Ohrenzeuge (Earwitness).  Begun in 1997, there are seventeen character studies in the series to date, composed for piccolo, bass flute, ocarina, basset horn, contrabassoon, alto saxophone, bass saxophone, trumpet, violin, violoncello, contrabass, guitar, percussion, glass harmonica, cimbalom, piano, and organ.  In this performance, seven of character studies are paired with the chamber work. 

In the chamber work, performers improvise in various duo, trio, and quintet combinations, developing musical fragments from these solo studies, which are used as raw material for a variety of musical conversations — not unlike the interaction of distinct characters at a social gathering. Whereas the character studies in this collection explore the psychological qualities of the characters portrayed in Canetti's Der Ohrenzeuge, Canetti-menagerie is more of a sociological study of these characters' various interactions — very much in the spirit of another one of Canetti's writings, Masse und Macht (Crowds and Power), an idiosyncratic yet penetrating study of group dynamics and power structures within various societal constructs.

Featured performers:

Carol Wilson and William Joyner, narrators
Elizabeth McNutt, piccolo 
Kimberly Cole Luevano, basset horn 
John Holt, trumpet 
Christopher Deane, cimbalom 
Jacob Garcia, percussion 
Andrew May, violin 
Madeleine Shapiro, cello 

Location:
Moody Performance Hall, 2520 Flora Street Dallas, TX 75201

Tickets:
Box Office Opens January 23, 2017 Tickets for concert only in advance through theMPAC.com - $10/$8 
Evening of performance tickets available at the Moody Performance Hall: Only will-call tickets, cash or check.