Tectonics 2024 Artist Profile
Charles Uzor was born 1961 in Nigeria and came to Switzerland during the Biafra war. After studying in Switzerland, he follows the oboist Gordon Hunt for a postgraduate course at the Royal Academy of Music London. In 1990, after studying with H.W. Henze, he obtains the Dip. RAM and a Master’s degree. 2005 he completes his dissertation on “Melody and the Phenomenology of Internal Time-Awareness”.
Uzor's oeuvre focusses on pieces with ensemble and voice. Collaborations with Swiss ensembles (e.g. Ensemble La Notte, Carmina Quartett) generate numerous pieces: Canto, Notre Vie, Ricercare and Akhenaten's Hymnos to Aton. Go wins the International Composition Prize of the Onassis Foundation. The opera Black Tell is staged at Expo 02.
After pieces with electronics, Uzor spends a sabbatical at Berkeley with Fred Lerdahl.
spleen /mimicri and Nri /mimicri, with bird song and air acoustics lowered by octaves, represent Uzor’s concern with mimicry and identity and the impact of Derek Parfit’s philosophy of personality.
Recent pieces as Mothertongue on the loss of language, 8’46’’. George Floyd in memoriam and Merrusch on refugees on maritime routes strengthen Uzor’s political positions. In 2021/22 Uzor is composer in residence in Tours with the Ensemble Ptyx. In 2023 Parmenides Prooimion, 8’46’’ and Katharsis Kalkül. George Floyd in memoriam are premiered by London Sinfonietta and the LFCO at Time of Music (Finland), the Lucerne Forward Festival and at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Hier in diesem zierl’chen Prunkgebäude for 5 Choirs, Recitation and Soundbawls is performed by the BR-Choir in Munich (cond. Rupert Huber).
In 2024 Go. Septet for Ballet imaginaire will be performed by ICE and the OENM. Breaking of the Vessels commissioned by the 麻豆社 SSO will receive its premier at the Tectonics Festival (cond. Ilan Volkov).
Uzor is fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2024/25). While working on the opera Leopold II.exhibit he is currently writing new pieces for Ekmeles vocal Ensemble and the Swiss Duo Aventure.
Charles Uzor lives in Switzerland and Greece. His work has been published on 4 CDs by Neos and col legno.
Breaking of the Vessels for Orchestra and Tape (2024)
Why are we here? How did everything come to exist? 24 years after my piece Zimzum, I became once more hooked on these questions posed by the "lion" Isaak Luria, founder of the Lurian kabbala. The “breaking of the vessels” as the 16th century mystic saw it, is the cause of an accident in the genesis, where godly light in its abundance caused the breaking of three of the ten vessels that were meant to store the light and thus started the interaction of good and evil, chaos and clarity, thus the beginning of the world. I was fascinated by the vigourous duality of this concept, a concept of up and down, above and below, with circles containing different realities and their correlation, influence and correspondence. In my reading, this translates to a dichotomous orchestral thinking and to a confluence of hybrid sounds, dissonances and consonances constantly shifting from one to the other.
Soon after the introduction the orchestra is dragged into a sustained electronic sound with amorphous texture continually absorbed by soloist instruments and massive sound waves. The hybrid texture moves like a mass of lava gradually gaining in melodic clarity. Neither the "emanation of light" nor the "breaking of the vessels" happens with a bang, but they creep in slowly and persistently as water pouring out slowly but firmly. The change in a condition becomes noticeable only retrospectively and from the outside. Ultimately, this futile though unremitting reasoning can be seen (by someone ignorant of Hebrew and far from understanding Rabbi Luria’s Schvirat ha-Kelim) as the breaking of light through the sensation of the self and the conflict with the other, shown here by the persistent presence of the individual voice and its confrontation with the tape. - Charles Uzor
