Liminar

[MX]

Photo by Emilio Espinosa

Liminar is a 20-piece ensemble founded in 2011 by vocalist Carmina Escobar and violist Alexander Bruck. The only independent ensemble of its kind in Mexico, it is dedicated to investigating the boundaries and liminal territories between music, performance, sound installation and improvisation.

Liminar performs in museums, galleries, and other alternative forums throughout North America and Europe. While it places a special emphasis on repertoire by primarily Mexican composers, it also prioritizes Mexican premieres of seminal pieces in the international contemporary music canon—works by composers from Xenakis to Lucier and from Lachenmann to Tenney—and collaborating with living composers: Christian Wolff, Carola Bauckholt, Michael Pisaro, Carlos Sandoval, Alberto Bernal, Maximilian Marcoll and Iván Naranjo, to name just a few. Liminar works without a permanent director, though it has formed lasting relationships with two of the country’s best-known conductors: Rodrigo Macías y Ludwig Carrasco.

Liminar has attracted particular attention for its role in honouring the late Mexican composer Julián Carrillo, who invented a system of microtonal music even before Harry Partch had developed his 43-tone scale. In 2015 the ensemble gave the first performance in almost two decades of Carrillo’s “Preludio a Colón,” which will also be presented at CTM 2017. Mark Swed of the LA Times credited Liminar for portraying Carrillo as “the next great rediscovery.”

In 2016 Liminar released its first CD, Ignacio Baca Lobera - Música de Cámara, on Cero Records. It appears at CTM alongside Berlin’s Ensemble KNM for a special concert at Radialsystem.

Radical Temperaments

HAU2, Thu 02.02.2017, 19:30

José Manuel Alcántara, Loré Lixenberg, Alexander Bruck, Liminar with Carlos Sandoval

The World After Tiepolo: America

Radialsystem V, Sat 04.02.2017, 20:00

Ensemble KNM, Liminar