"My interest in Daniel Libeskind began with the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and particularly the Holocaust tower," Bainbridge shares. "I visited it before it opened, and when the door slammed behind me, shutting me into that unheated space, the experience was incredibly powerful." In 2004, Bainbridge met Libeskind and shared with him his vision for creating a new work based on music and spatial relationships. Libeskind was eager to collaborate with him. "My intention," Bainbridge continues, "[was] to create a fluid, modular type of construction, where each of the musical ‘building blocks' corresponds to a recurring aspect of Libeskind's architectural vision. The [work would be] a piece that can be assembled and reassembled in different, specific spaces, and although the same musical materials will be common to all performances, the continuity and spatial layout will vary from place to place....[I wanted to] relate new music to new architectural environments, where architecture and music can be fused into a unified concept of sound and space. Music Space Reflection [is] devised so that it can be performed within the actual Libeskind spaces themselves, but also that cutting-edge technology could be used to recreate these acoustic environments within concert halls around the globe."
Next fall, subsequent performances take place in Toronto at the Libeskind-designed Renaissance ROM project at the Royal Ontario Museum, and in Copenhagen at the Royal Danish Academy.
Architecture is an acoustical reality. Most people think about it as something visual or spatial. But the sense of balance is in the inner ear and orientation is through the ear. So the acoustics of a building — the sound of a space — is an incredibly important part of my work. And the whole process of architecture is also musical, both in its end characteristic and in its relationship to time.
— Daniel Libeskind
Music Space Reflection
Duration: 25'
Electronics; 4fl.4cl/4tpt.4tbn/4vn.4vc