A two part program: Patrick Higgins will present his most recent album Versus, released on Other People in 2024. Acclaimed new music ensemble Yarn/Wire will also present the NY premiere of Higgins’s work “Three Lines of Flight.”

Patrick Higgins guitar and electronics

Yarn/Wire
Russel Greenberg percussion
Laura Barger piano
Julia Den Boer piano
Sae Hashimoto percussion

Versus marks a new direction and development of Higgins’s acclaimed work as a guitarist and composer, drawing on electronic music, free improvisation, and avant-garde modern composition, Versus is a highly emotional and expressive work that pushes Higgins’s own instrumental virtuosity into new territories. He performs guitar, keyboards, synthesizer, drums and laptop programming across a 9-track record that traverses and transforms many aspects of his earlier work. The title track “Versus” was premiered at Monom Studios in Berlin, in a configuration for 75 surround-sound speakers. Combining composed and written elements with highly-focused lyrical improvisations, VERSUS shows Higgins at his best — bridging styles and innovating new music that is harsh while seductive, intense while inviting, and always unexpected.

“Three Lines of Flight” engages a new music in a position of constant threshold — a music forever in-between states of becoming, fleeing from itself, tracing the world of its wake against the world it escapes. The unique instrumentation of double piano and double percussion frames a particular vision of symmetry in this work — a symmetry which will be consistently questioned, exploited, undermined, exaggerated and liberated throughout the performance. The use of complex counterpoint, stubborn unison, solo, duet, trio, and quartet arrangement, as well as electronic interference, push the territory of the traditional ensemble to a fragile and ultimately elastic point of transformation: suggesting other instruments, other modes of being and hearing altogether —towards ecstatic new planes of connectivity. This work is written in three movements, each in its way is situated within a small moment of crisis. Sprung from a particular trap — the question of freedom is posed anew each time. Each movement of the work is an attempt to trace, to articulate, or perhaps to stimulate a way out: a line of escape, a path through the labyrinth. Invention within aporia. Between moments of confinement or definition, a fragile infinitesimal escape: a transition between regimes, a flicker, a brief vibration, the hint or taste or scent of a new path — a potential connection to a new outside.

“Patrick Higgins composes with a scholar’s historical perspective and a punk’s sense of abandon.” – Pitchfork

“one of the prime movers of the avant-garde” – The New Yorker

Patrick Higgins is an American composer, guitarist, and producer from New York City, known for his work in experimental and contemporary classical music. Higgins plays guitar and composes in the band Zs, described by The New York Times as “one of the strongest avant-garde bands in New York.” Heralded as a “formidable concert music composer” (Boston Globe) and “one of the most gifted guitarists working today” (The Quietus), Higgins has received attention for bridging traditions including baroque chamber music, contemporary noise, electronics and 20th century minimalism. His work has been performed in over 25 countries internationally, and he has composed works for some of the world’s leading ensembles, ranging from chamber orchestra works, percussion cycles, and string quartets to smaller ensembles and soloists. He has scored works for television, museum exhibitions, and films both short-form and feature- length. Since 2013, he has operated Future-Past Studios, a recording studio in upstate NY.

Higgins recently had a solo exhibition of artworks and sheet music, as well as two world premiers, at The Clark Museum in MA, USA. In 2019, he was a curator and headliner of the Le Guess Who festival in Holland. Higgins has performed and presented works at many of the world’s largest festivals and venues across the past 12 years, including The Broad Museum (LA), The Warhol Museum, SF MOMA, Unsound Festival (Poland), Pioneer Works (NYC), Monom Berlin, Sony Ginza Park (Tokyo), ReWire (Holland), Cleveland MOCA, ICA Boston, Teatro Carignano (Torino IT), Sacrum Profanum (Kracow), Merriweather Post Pavillion, Donau Festival (Austria), Paula Cooper Gallery (NYC), Club Unit (Tokyo), Shakespeare Theater (Gdansk), The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and many more. Higgins currently records for the Other People label, and has previously worked with NNA Tapes, Northern Spy, and Telegraph Harp records.

Yarn/Wire is a new music quartet dedicated to the promotion of creative, meaningful live musical experiences in the US and abroad. Yarn/Wire achieves this by supporting composers and audiences through live performances, educational activities, and large-scale collaborative projects. Our artistic programming is driven by the desire to present music that reflects the full spectrum of our community at the highest level.