Arnold Schoenberg’sdazzling and enigmatic Pierrot Lunaire is featured in an evening of colorful 20th century theater and cinema classics. In 1912 Pierrot rocked the music world. Struggling between traditional tonality and twelve- tone music, Schoenberg proposed new ways of musical expression through gesture and atonality, developing a new singing technique, "sprechstimme," a dramatic vocalization between speech and song. Ninety years later, Pierrot is considered a pivotal work and must be heard with fresh musical ears. As a visual foil for the music, we screen two film classics, Luis Buñuel’sLe chien andalou and Joris Ivens’Rain to the skillful scores ofMartin Matalon’sLas ciete vidas de un gato and Hanns Eisler’sFourteen Ways to Describe Rain.
Join us for a pre- concert lecture 6: 15pm hosted by Seattle Weekly’sGavin Borchert.