InnerChamber

As smoked glass allows us to look directly at the full glory of the solar eclipse, so does art provide a lens through which we can absorb truths that would be too terrifying to digest in their purest form. 

Erwin Schulhoff, a Czech composer of Jewish descent, and many other serious composers of the early twentieth century, embraced Dadaism as a lens through which to process the absurdity of the mechanistic age around them. Disguised with lightness and silliness at the dawn of the jazz age, Schulhoff’s mode of expression resonates with the terrible truths of a polarized and dehumanized era of state sanctioned conflict and violence.

Referring out of context to a single line from Milton’s epic, the title of Missy Mazzoli’s bass concerto “Dark With Excessive Bright'' highlights the surprising richness and contrast of colour inherent in the double bass when treated as a solo instrument. INNERchamber’s Ian Whitman is the soloist in this effervescent masterwork of the modern double bass repertoire.