Fiday-Palooza

We hope you’ll join us for this look back at and celebration of Michael Fiday, featuring his friends and guests, Mantra Percussion and Hypercube.

Mantra Percussion, Inc. described by Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times as “seductive and accessible”, is a future-focused arts organization committed to a lasting influence on percussion music.

Hypercube is a NYC-based quartet that embraces the boundaries of chamber music, featuring cutting-edge works for saxophone, guitar, piano and percussion, while spanning electric and acoustic worlds.

Describing this concert Fiday says:

I see this concert as a celebration on so many levels: a celebration of my twenty years in Cincinnati, of a new body of work composed during the pandemic, of the community of stellar performers I’ve had a long history of collaborating with, and most important, the return to live performance – a vital, essential gift we should never take for granted.

This concert features an array of performers, including two exciting New York-based ensembles – Hypercube (“jarring, compelling” – Washington Post) and Mantra Percussion (“seductive and accessible…with steroidal energy” – The New York Times), as well as flutist Julianna Eidle, clarinetist Laura Sabo, and acclaimed classical guitarist Dieter Hennings.

Inspiration for my work comes from a lot of different directions, and the works on this program are informed by a diverse array of sources, styles and events, including music by jazz icons John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, vintage recordings of Delta Blues, the haiku of master poet Matsuo Basho, the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, and the recent passing of contemporary music icons Louis Andriessen and George Crumb, two former teachers who changed the way I write, hear and think about music.

Many of the works on this program show my love of writing for percussion, and also seek to question the traditional manner in which performers approach their instruments. Can an ensemble treat the inside of a piano as a drum circle? Can a flute sound like both a fife and a drum? Can a clarinet produce an effect similar to the feedback of an electric guitar? And can electric guitars themselves be played by percussionists as percussion instruments? These are risky propositions that require fearless performers with a penchant for experimentation and a sense of abandon. The performers on this program fit this bill to a tee.