Three Commissions

For the project West Coast Reloaded of Ensemble Proton Bern, Mu-Xuan Lin, Oren Boneh and Ken Ueno compose three works inspired by a tour of the ensemble on the American West Coast in 2018. This tour was marked by artistic encounters between Ensemble Proton and young, student composers and their teachers.

The work concepts of Oren Boneh (then a PhD candidate at Berkeley) and Ken Ueno (a professor at Berkeley) spring from the exchanges between Ensemble Proton and the composers in 2018. Oren Boneh’s new piece pursues an almost music-dramatic setting. It will showcase the solo clarinetist Richard Haynes’ impressive virtuosity in concert with the unique mix of instruments in the ensemble as a whole. Haynes and Boneh will work closely together to make the solo instrument audible in all its facets, exploring the contrasts between the beautiful, the comic and the monstrous. Ken Ueno, in turn, dedicates his new work to the lupophone, the bass oboe that Martin Bliggenstorfer had built several years ago specifically for his instrumental practice. Here, too, composer and soloist will be in concentrated exchange. Another commissioned work is composed by Los Angeles-based Mu-Xuan Lin, who was one of the winners of the Protonwerk tender in 2013. The composition commissions to Mu-Xuan Lin, Oren Boneh and Ken Ueno for the Ensemble Proton Bern are made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. The project is dedicated to Swiss composer Dominique Schafer, who was part of the 2018 tour and passed away much too soon in 2019.

Further information:
ensembleproton.ch

Dates

December 13, 2022
Dampfzentrale Bern

December 16, 2022
Musikcampus Lucerne