IcarUS At thE caBARet VoLtairE: parT I (tHe RENdeZVOus)
two guitarists
c.6:30
to Peter Yates and Matthew Elgart
August - September, 1985
The work incorporates theatrical elements and spoken text, as well as a variety of extended techniques for the guitar.
The Elgart/Yates Classical Guitar Duo
Oscar Villanueva and Camilo Salazar, guitarists
The Elgart/Yates Classical Guitar Duo
Oscar Villanueva and Camilo Salazar, guitarists
Ted Forbes and Darin Au, guitarists
The Elgart/Yates Classical Guitar Duo
John Lowrie and Feliu Gasull i Altisent, guitars
The Elgart/Yates Classical Guitar Duo
score (pdf)
audio recording (mp3)
Edited version of the 13 April 1986 & 23 May 1986 performances; Matthew Elgart & Peter Yates. An excerpt (score pp. 11-15) of this performance is also available here.
video recording 1 (YouTube)
Recorded 26 October 2008, University of North Texas; Matthew Elgart & Peter Yates, guitarists. (Video edited by Joseph Klein; Greg Dixon, audio engineer.)
video recording 2 (Quicktime movie)
Performance recorded 23 May 1986, UC San Diego; Matthew Elgart & Peter Yates. This is one of the earliest recorded performances of the work, by the duo for which it was composed. (Video recorded by Paul Herschenson; edited and mixed by Joseph Klein.)
video recording 3 (Quicktime movie)
Performance recorded 7 June 1996, Tulsa, OK; Ted Forbes & Darin Au. (Video recorded and edited by Steve Liggett.)
video recording 4 (Quicktime movie)
Performance recorded 14 November 2002, University of North Texas; Oscar Villanueva & Camilo Salazar. (Video recorded by Beth Andresen; edited and mixed by Camilo Salazar.)
photograph 1
Elgart/Yates performance at the 1988 Gaudeamus MusicWeek
photograph 2
Forbes/Au performance at the 1996 New Genre Festival
IcarUS At thE caBARet VoLtairE: parT I (tHe RENdeZVOus) was composed in the summer of 1985 for the Los Angeles-based guitar duo of Matthew Elgart and Peter Yates. The work was premiered on 18 December 1985 by the Elgart/Yates Duo at the University of Leuven, Belgium, and has since been performed over fifty times throughout the United States and Europe. Much of the work is based on a process of growth/metamorphosis/decay, though these processes are often obscured by the density of their unfolding. Texts from four different languages (German, French, Italian, and English) are arbitrarily juxtaposed, their placement derived from Morse Code and organized according to pre-compositional decisions determined by a deck of playing cards. The result is a self-reflexive caricature of the inherently theatrical nature of musical performance itself, combining exaggerated physical gestures, extended performance techniques, and absurd spoken passages.
IcarUS At thE caBARet VoLtairE is the recipient of a 1987 ASCAP Morton Gould Award and an honorable mention in the 1988 Gaudeamus Prize Competition. The work is included on the album Improbable Encounters (innova 873, 2014).