THE GALILEAN MOONS
ROBERT DICK and URSEL SCHLICHT
ROBERT DICK, flutes (bass flutes in F and C), open-hole alto flute, flute and Glissando Flute, piccolo
URSEL SCHLICHT, piano
Founded in 2004, the duo of flutist Robert Dick and pianist Ursel Schlicht seeks nothing less than the redefinition of the flute – piano duo. Their music, integrating composition and improvisation, radically expands the sound world and expressive possibilities of the traditional configuration.
Schlicht is a masterfully poetic player both inside the piano and on the keyboard.
Dick is known for creating revolutionary visions of the flute’s musical role.
Their music is intense, colorful and memorable. Each piece reveals new colors and new expressive dimensions in a clear structure that listeners follow excitedly.
“Theirs is music that looks forward and pushes towards a future in which limitations are swept away (Who says you can’t bend pitches and play glissandos on the flute and piano? Watch us!) but in which the art’s purely human aspect -- the exchange and interplay that make music a conversation that goes beyond words — remain in the spotlight.”
Allan Kozinn
“Robert Dick and Ursel Schlicht carried on the idea that if musical art is going
somewhere, the means of conveyance is as important as the destination.”
New York Times
From THE GALILEAN MOONS liner notes by Allan Kozinn
Both Dick and Schlicht have devoted themselves to stretching the sonorities and
textures listeners expect from their instruments and to sculpting fresh musical
forms in which elements of formal composition and improvisation are blended.
TENDRILS: kaleidoscopic, with wild flute figures opening the work and tactile
figures on the keyboard’s upper reaches and harp-like textures inside the piano
SIC BISQUITUS DISINTEGRAT: a written out head played in unison in open fifths,
upon which Dick and Schlicht extemporize. It’s Latin title, loosely translated, “That’s
the Way the Cookie Crumbles.”
A LINGERING SCENT OF EDEN: Images of open space, birds, wind and weather.
There is also, interestingly, an approach to harmony that moves further towards jazz
than anything else here.
THE GALILEAN MOONS: The four moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo — Io,
Europa. Calisto and Ganymede — inspired fascinating sonic landscapes. Their
aural imagery varies across the expanse of the set: flute multiphonics and
percussive sounds... a metallic piccolo and mysterious glittering high piano
timbres…sudden, burst-like piano chords that melt into resonance…an alternation
of airy, fluttering flute sounds, vocalizations and brusque, solid keyboard chords.
DARK MATTER: Almost certainly the first chamber work to make creative use of the
nonsense texts that internet spammers affix to emails in the hope of eluding spam
filters.
LIFE CONCERT: Richly episodic, it explores the angularity of European atonalism,
a touch of bluesiness here and there, and the sounds of far-flung cultures. And the themes
from the final movement were derived from an Indian raga, Rag Multani -- but with
a twist.
The Galilean Moons is the second CD by the Robert Dick-Ursel Schlicht duo released on NEMU Records. Their first, PHOTOSPHERE, received critical acclaim:
"Robert Dick is a true revolutionary who has retooled both the flute and flute technique for the 21st Century. Schlicht knows how to make substantive statements that favor clarity over density, making her a fine foil for Dick. Photosphere is a thoroughly engaging set of duos."
-- Bill Shoemaker, www.pointofdeparture.org
The duo has performed in the United States, Germany and Mexico. In New York, they have played at Merkin Hall on the Interpretations series, Roulette, the Miller Theater, CUNY Graduate Center (Elebash Recital Hall), North River Concerts at the Greenwich House Music School, NYU’s Loewe Theater, the TriBeCa Arts Festival, Chelsea Art Museum, Goethe Institute New York and the DiMenna Center. Other US performances include Edgefest (Ann Arbor), the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Emit series (Florida), Music at UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County) and Hallwalls (Buffalo). They were featured at the International Festival Cervantino in Guanajuato, Mexico in 2009 and also performed at El Colegio Nacional (Mexico City) and at the Puebla Festival.
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