Yasuda, Davis: Ekecheiria for Voices and Bass Clarinet Gareth Davis, Exaudi Vocal Ensemble, Fumio Yasuda

• Fumio Yasuda (b. 1953):
• 1 Yasuda: The Games Must Go On: Part I for Six Voices and Six Bass Clarinets 02:31
• Gareth Davis (b. 1950):
• 2 Davis: Ekecheiria: I 02:24
• Fumio Yasuda:
• 3 Yasuda: The Games Must Go On: Part II for Six Voices and Two Bass Clarinets 04:28
• Gareth Davis
• 4 Davis: Ekecheiria: II 01:21
• Fumio Yasuda:
• 5 Yasuda: The Games Must Go On: Part III for Six Voices and Improvising Bass Clarinet 04:04
• Gareth Davis
• 6 Davis: Ekecheiria: III 02:26
• Fumio Yasuda:
• 7 Yasuda: The Games Must Go On: Part IV for Six Voices and Five Bass Clarinets 03:34
• Gareth Davis
• 8 Davis: Ekecheiria: IV 03:06
• Fumio Yasuda:
• 9 Yasuda: The Games Must Go On: Part V for Six Voices and Four Bass Clarinets 06:41
• Gareth Davis
• 10 Davis: Ekecheiria: V 01:03
• Fumio Yasuda:
• 11 Yasuda: The Games Must Go On: Part Vi for Six Voices and Three Bass Clarinets 03:55
• Gareth Davis
• 12 Davis: Ekecheiria: Vi 02:36
• Fumio Yasuda:
• 13 Yasuda: The Games Must Go On: Part VII for Six Voices and Eight Bass Clarinets 04:50
• Total Runtime 42:59

Info for Yasuda, Davis: Ekecheiria for Voices and Bass Clarinet

For the opening of the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, Krzysztof Penderecki set to music the text of the Ekecheiria (Truce) Agreement, agreed in 884 BC to ensure the peaceful running of the Games.

In 2022, Munich celebrated and commemorated the 50th anniversary of the "cheerful" Games, which unfortunately ended in tragedy. In this context, Fumio Yasuda was commissioned to once again set Ekecheiria to music as a mirror of those events. The result is seven compositions for voices and bass clarinet based on IOC President Avery Brundage's controversial demand "The Games Must Go On", interspersed with sound bridges entitled "Ekecheiria" by Gareth Davis.

Gareth Davis, one of the most outstanding soloists in New Music, meets EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, one of the world's leading vocal ensembles of today. EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, based in London, is directed by James Weeks and draws its voices from the best vocal talent in the UK. Winter & Winter's recorded works with EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble range from Carlo Gesualdo to Michael Finnissy. Gareth Davis is featured on "The Ninth Wave - Ode to Nature," a composition by Fumio Yasuda based on Ludwig van Beethoven.

Gareth Davis, bass clarinet

EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble:
James Weeks, conductor
Cressida Sharp, soprano
Lotte Betts-Dean, mezzo soprano
Jessica Gillingwater, mezzo soprano
David de Winter, tenor
Ruairi Bowen, tenor
Michael Hickman, baritone

Exaudi Vocal Ensemble
Founded in London in 2002, Exaudi is one of the UK's leading vocal ensembles. It is world-renowned for its performances of the radical currents of vocal chamber music, whether the avant-garde of the late Renaissance (Vicentino, Luzzaschi, Monteverdi, Gesualdo) or the music of the present day, working equally with complexity, microtonality and experimental aesthetics. Recent new music is central to the ensemble's repertoire, which has premiered many works by the leading composers of our time, from Sciarrino and Ferneyhough to Cassandra Miller and Jürg Frey, nationally and worldwide. A consistent feature of Exaudi's programming is the blending of contemporary music with medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music. In 2019, Exaudi released its first recording exclusively of early music works, Carlo Gesualdo Madrigali, on Winter & Winter, which won the German Record Award and was selected as one of BBC Radio 3's CDs of the Year.

Exaudi's numerous international engagements have taken the ensemble throughout Europe, often in collaboration with leading orchestras. Exaudi receives regular airplay on BBC Radio 3 and European radio stations, and has released seven recordings on the Winter & Winter label.

Gareth Davis
born in England, is an artist, composer and musician living in Amsterdam. He plays clarinets, the result of a more or less spontaneous purchase while window shopping in Covent Garden in London. The fortunate location of a wonderful (and, equally important, quite inexpensive) second-hand record store a few steps from the bus stop to get to school for seven years and the daily newspaper delivery led to a somewhat multi-layered, generally unclassifiable musical taste.

His activities range from sound art and contemporary classical music to rock, improvisation and noise, collaborating among others with composers such as Bernhard Lang, Peter Ablinger, Toshio Hosokawa and Jonathan Harvey, and as a soloist with orchestras such as the SWR Synphonieorchester, Warsaw Philharmonic and Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, performances with groups and performers ranging from the Neue Vocalsolisten and the Arditti Quartet to improvisers Elliott Sharp and Frances Marie Uitti, electronic artists Robin Rimbaud and Merzbow, and multimedia work with artists such as Christian Marclay and Peter Greenaway.

Gareth Davis performs on "The Ninth Wave - Ode to Nature," released by Winter & Winter, nine compositions by Fumio Yasuda based on works by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Fumio Yasuda
was born in Tokyo, where he lives and works. He studied classical composition at Kunitachi College of Music and soon found great interest in working with improvised music as well. Fumio Yasuda cites the late Romantic compositions of Franz Schmidt as decisive influences, as well as John Cage's border crossings. In 1995 he began his musical collaboration with Japan's most famous photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. Yasuda's compositions for Arakinema combine Araki's imagery with soundscapes and music to create a total work of art. Arakinema is performed all over the world and causes a sensation in houses like the Wiener Secession, the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, various Art Spaces in New York and last but not least in Tokyo.

In the late 1990s, Araki introduced pianist and composer Fumio Yasuda to Stefan Winter. Since 2000, Yasuda and Winter have been working together, realizing recording art, sound art works, installations and art performances such as "On the Path of Death and Live" in New York and Munich, "Poem of a Cell" in Tokyo, San Sebastian, Haifa, Bordeaux, Munich, and "The Ninth Wave" in Tokyo, Munich and Istanbul. He has composed numerous film scores, including "Help Me Eros," selected for the Venice International Film Festival. As a composer and pianist, he performs with leading ensembles and is at home in both jazz and contemporary music.

Booklet for Yasuda, Davis: Ekecheiria for Voices and Bass Clarinet