Ensemble Offspring

Elemental and expressive, ritualistic and ecstatic – the music of Iannis Xenakis bears a primordial power that moves the earth for listeners and performers alike. Ensemble Offspring celebrates the 100th anniversary of this iconic composer in 2022 with Offspring X Xenakis at Phoenix Central Park. The works featured in this program span the gamut of his career: from Zyia, an early melodic chamber work, to the percussion solo classic Rebonds and the massive swirling electronic immersions of Polytopes. Featuring Ensemble Offspring’s virtuosic instrumentalists, this program is our homage to a true master of his craft.

Xenakis is a composer whose craggily, joyously elemental music turned collections of pitches and rhythms and instruments into a force of nature, releasing a power that previous composers had only suggested metaphorically but which he would realise with arguably greater clarity, ferocity, intensity than any musician, before or since. 

– Tom Service