Saturday, February 26, 2022
7:30 pm
This is a ticketed event at Doudna Fine Arts Center.
This collaborative performance by a composer and a visual artist is a reactive dialogue between body, sound, and space. Aleatory music composed for clarinets, trombone, and marimba and played by EIU student musicians creates sound that is unique to the present moment and dependent on chance and spontaneity. The body, in turn, acts as a vessel for motion and form. The slow and unsettling unfolding—which is informed as much by empty space and silence as Marquez-Barrio's and Vera’s identities as immigrants in a lineage of immigrants—positions the human condition as one of futility, impermanence, and beauty. This event is sponsored by the Tarble Arts Center.
Rafael E. Vera received his BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was a recipient of the Edward L. Ryerson Fellowship Award and the George L. and Roman Siegel Fellowship Award. In 2013 he received the 3Arts Ragdale Residency Fellowship. He currently teaches Painting, Drawing, and Printmaking at Loyola University Chicago. Recent exhibitions, curatorial projects, and publications include New American Paintings, issue 107; the 23rd Evanston and Vicinity Biennial, where he received the 2017 Exhibition Award; the LA Art Show 2016 and 2018; Transient Visitant (with marimba, clarinets, body and chair) in collaboration with composer Victor Marquez-Barrios, Truman State University, Missouri; Present Standard, Chicago Cultural Center; Bad Editions (1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition), Ralph Arnold Gallery, NEIU Art Gallery and Arrowhead Gallery, Illinois; Mutual Dealings, Bert Green Fine Art, Chicago; and The Moments Between: New Work by Rafael E. Vera, Averill and Bernard Leviton A+D Gallery, Chicago. Vera was born and raised in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and presently lives with his wife and two kids in the city of Chicago.
Venezuelan composer and guitarist Victor E. Marquez-Barrios holds an extended catalog of works that includes compositions for a variety of solo instruments, numerous chamber ensembles, mixed choir, electronics, symphonic band, and symphony orchestra. His music has been performed, published, and recorded by important soloists and ensembles from Latin America (Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, enCayapa Ensemble), the United States (H2 Quartet, Alexander String Quartet), and Europe (Proxima Centauri, Guitar Duo Montes-Kircher). Works by Marquez-Barrios have received performances at numerous international music festivals such as the Latin American Music Festival (Caracas, Venezuela), XVII Festival of Contemporary Music of Havana (Cuba), 20eme Festival Internacional de la Clarinette (Martinique), Hollywood Fringe Festival (Los Angeles), the World Saxophone Congress (2012 and 2015 editions), and ClarinetFest 2018 (Ostend, Belgium), among others. Today, in conjunction with his active career as a composer and guest lecturer, Marquez-Barrios teaches music theory and composition as part of the faculty at Truman State University, where he is also the founding director of Uncommon Practice, the University’s contemporary-music ensemble.
