Andrew Infanti, Bilkent Dept. of Music Guest Artist 24 Feb – 1 Mar 2025
Introduction
Music at its core, and at its best is collaboration. The Bilkent University Music Department hosts a week of conversations, coachings and co-creation with guest artist, Andrew Infanti. Prized for his performance interpretations of 20th and 21st Century piano pieces, his writings on music, and his work as a creative collaborator, Infanti sparks deep inquiry into musical meaning and how we partner musically with fellow musicians, with artists in other media and with audiences. The week begins with a Soirée Musicale, a celebration of French art song featuring performances from the Bilkent Voice Dept. with salon-style discussion about the songs and texts animated by Andrew Infanti. On Friday afternoon, Infanti will give the Composition Seminar, “Electronic means, human goals?” presenting Austrian composer and conceptual artistic Peter Ablinger’s cycle Voices and Piano, and the challenges this cycle offers pianists and listeners. The week culminates in collaborative concert by faculty and students of Bilkent University, including Turkish premiers and new works from the Bilkent Department of Design created specially for this program.
Events are free and open to the Bilkent community and the public. All students and faculty are warmly encouraged to attend, even the simply curious. The aim of these events is to spark future collaborations within and beyond the campus involving Bilkent creatives of every stripe.
EVENTS
Singing Masterclass: Soirée Musicale
Monday, Feb. 24 18:30 mssf 244
Bilkent University Voice Department invites you to a Soirée Musicale, arelaxed setting for exacting performances and stimulating discussion of French art song and poetry. The event will be animated by Andrew Infanti, Paris-based salonnier and specialist in the history, literature, and performance of Mélodies and Chansons. Faculty and select students will perform works by Chabrier, Duparc, Hahn, Poulenc, and Saint-Saens. This event is free and open to all, including the finest vocal conoscienti, lovers of French culture, and the genuinely curious.
Composition Seminar: Electronic means, human goals?
Friday, Feb. 28 15:30 mssf 242
The risk of confusing information with knowledge is one of the defining stakes in contemporary life. How have certain artists suggested strategies around this Scylla and Charybdis of the current age? Pianist and musicologist Andrew Infanti will present and discuss pieces for piano and playback by Austrian composer and conceptual artistic Peter Ablinger from his cycle Voices and Piano (1998-present). Between spectral analysis, technological limitations, historical contexts, cultural preconceptions, performer habitude, and a general reflection on the “musicality” of the speaking voice, the work seeks to engages today’s composers and critical listeners.
Concert: Portraits and Absences
Sat. March 1 20:00 Bilkent Concert Hall
Flex your curiosities with a collaborative concert of rare and scintillating music from Faculty and students of the Bilkent University departments of Music and Fine Arts, with guest artist, Andrew Infanti. Pianist Belinda Chen Yokuş opens the concert with newly discovered film treatments for piano by Charles Koechlin, developed and presented in collaboration with the original animations of Bilkent Graphic Design alumnus Mehveş Topçuoğlu. Andrew Infanti and Chen Yokuş follow with set from the fascinating Peter Ablinger cycle Voices and Piano, summoning the speaking voices of figures such as Billie Holliday and Valentina Tereshkova through the piano. Soprano Juliana Snapper joins Infanti for the Modernist middle of the program singing tender and playful Modernist art songs by Igor Stravinsky, Luigi Dallapiccola and Hanns Eisler, alongside Infanti’s exuberant interpretation of the Schoenberg Suite for Piano, Op. 25. The concert closes with a set by Percy Aldridge Grainger including a pair of lush two-piano settings from Chen Yokuş and Infanti, and a performance by the Bilkent University Chorale, featuring Soprano Jennifer Tipton.
