by Andrew Frisicano

IX. 17 - Study for Terretektorh (distribution of musicians), 1965

Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary will explore the fundamental role of drawing in the work of Greek avant-garde composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001). A leading figure in twentieth century music, Xenakis was trained as a civil engineer, then became an architect and developed revolutionary designs while working with Le Corbusier. Comprised of nearly 100 documents created between 1953 and 1984, this will be the first North American exhibition dedicated to Xenakis's original works on paper. Included will be rarely-seen hand-rendered scores, architectural drawings, conceptual renderings, pre-compositional sketches, and graphic scores. Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary is co-curated by Xenakis scholar Sharon Kanach and critic Carey Lovelace and will travel to the Canadian Centre for Architecture (June 17 - October 17, 2010) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (November 7, 2010 - February 13, 2011).

The show is currently at the NYC Drawing Center through April 8th. That picture above is a diagram for an 88-member orchestra scattered among its audience (aka the squiggly lines). More works on display are below.

There are also concerts and events to go along with exhibit. JACK Quartet, who put out a CD and DVD of Xenakis's string quartets last May, already played in conjunction with showing earlier this month (videos from their DVD are below). JACK do have shows coming up, but those are mainly comprised of new material; they play March 3rd at Merkin Concert Hall. Their upcoming schedule also includes the Look & Listen Festival 2010 (coming up May 7th-9th); So Percussion are on the bill for that too, playing music by Morton Feldman, John Cage, and their own Jason Treuting (So Percussion are also at Carnegie Hall this March). Advance tickets for Look & Listen are available by phone.

If you'd like to learn more about the Xenakis show, co-curators Sharon Kanach and Carey Lovelace, who both worked with the composer, discussed the show with Art International Radio - that's streaming.

More drawings, videos, and Drawing Center info and events are below...

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