Fonema Consort is thrilled to welcome composer James Dillon to Chicago for a concert and public discussion of his chamber works. ANCIENT RITES II contrasts a selection of haunting vocal works by the Scottish composer with works by Mexican composer Julio Estrada his former student, Iván Sparrow. These pieces ultimately converge through the emergence of ritualistic elements as the core of musical expression.

The concert features James Dillon's solo piccolo work Diffraction and two of his sensuous vocal chamber works: Come Live with Me and selections from L'évolution du vol. Both feature rich instrumentation, texts that breathe natural magic, and mind-bending complexity that results in the lushest of musical environments.

In Julio Estrada's Miqi'Nahual for double bass, the instrument(s) (a second bass lying on a table is played with two bows) represents the corpse of Juan Preciado in his opera Murmullos del Páramo, based on Juan Rulfo's classic novel "Pedro Páramo." The search for a jarringly expressive soundworld in this piece deviates from the delicate textures of Sparrow's "Entre las grietas" (written for Fonema Consort for our debut at the International Festival of Chihuahua 2014); in this piece, the timbral explorations of Dillon's music appear in an intermediate state, constantly flowing from the sensual to the vernacular.

Program
James Dillon: Come Live with Me
James Dillon: Diffraction
James Dillon : A Roaring Flame
James Dillon: L'évolution de vol, selection
Julio Estrada: Miqi'Nahual
Iván Sparrow: Entre las grietas