Oscar Edelstein in Concert
Venue
Auditorium
Ticket prices
| £21.50 | Full Price Ticket |
*subject to booking fees (except at theatre box office)
Apr 2025
5
Sat
8:00pm
(doors: 7:00pm)
“… cult, absolutely original, ultra-powerful and new.” Carlos Marín, El Diario
Playing his first time ever in Scotland in Theatre Royal Dumfries, in the new concert “Bitácoras” Oscar Edelstein from Argentina plays his “un-classic” piano accompanied by tapes and texts, with vocals and video made by Welsh multimedia artist Deborah Claire Procter.
As a composer, pianist and researcher Edelstein is well known for his blend of music that mixes the popular, classical and contemporary - making him original, hard to define, and often considered as leading the avant-garde from Latin America.
“Bitácoras” translates as “binnacle” and refers to the ship’s logs which are usually kept on long sea voyages. In ancient times it included a book where sailors recounted their travels and recorded everything that happened. A binnacle is the place where this valuable information was stored to protect it from adverse weather conditions and the vicissitudes of the journey.
Edelstein’s composition is acknowledged by many as crucial in the map of Latin American contemporary music, opera and performance.
Colleagues and critics over the years have compared his music to “á la free jazz” or to names like Cecil Taylor, Zappa, King Crimson, Cage, Varèse, Bartok, Piazzolla, and one conductor even described directing his orchestral work “Cristal Argento I” as like being inside a Picasso painting. But as Edelstein has said, more important than any generous comparison, it’s about originality and being decisively Latin American with all the paradox, passion and politics which that implies.
This recital is a homage to the art of the score and to the idea that every aspect of music can be contained on paper - a tribute to the wise art of hands as encrypted in notations, drawings, poetry - the writings of an ancient journey which for us creates the only reality that matters.
Bitácoras [Pronounced bee-tah-koh-rah]
“Taking inspiration from myriad genres, the composer-cum-director-cum-pianist is one of the most innovative musicians around.”
Sophie Hern, Metro Cardiff
"It’s musical in a physical sense, authentic dithyrambic music, realised simultaneously with milimetric precision…”
Federico Monjeau, Clarín
“Edelstein possesses a formidable pianistic technique…”
Iberia & Latin American Music Society, Londo
“His works are characterised by transcending the limits between the popular and the academic.”
Diario Hoy, La Plata
“…the incredible Welsh vocalist Procter (her voice acting like one more instrument) …a one of a kind singer that is a lucky cross between Cathy Berberian and the free jazz vocalist Lauren Newton.”
Jorge Garcia, El Amante
“To the singer Procter it is only necessary to be grateful to her for the opportunity that welcomed the audience to be able to re-discover the incomparable and inimitable singularity of the beauty of the human voice. Her intervention (perhaps for coming closer to something that might unite scat or the onomatopoeic phonetics of certain African traditions) was simply dazzling for the technical solvency in the range, and her versatility…”
Carlos Marín, El Diario (Paraná)
“The audience is taken on a journey of sound colours that encompass the intensity and passion of Latin America giving the feel of being in the middle of a wild carnival of Argentinean rhythms - as if reflected in the mirror of a Jorge Luis Borges story or overlapping in a dream of Jackson Pollock.”
Audience Member
