The late composer’s ‘Palimpsest’ is at the center of a connective and digitized evening.In keeping with the Nimbus Ensemble’s tradition, its concert Thursday night at Zipper Hall was wrapped around a theme, this one prompted by a word, “palimpsest,” that is also the title of a 1979 work by the late Greek composer Iannis Xenakis. As explained by Nimbus founder and conductor Young Riddle, the program fed off the idea of a palimpsest — an ancient document written over multiple times and thus containing beguiling layers and traces of earlier texts.
That idea, Riddle said, was specifically evident in a digital reconfiguring by Dan Hosken (the premiere of his Xenakis-based “A Palimpsest of ‘Palimpsest’ “) and in the larger historical connection of Xenakis’ own layering upon the influential model of Arnold Schoenberg, whose Five Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 16, was performed in its chamber ensemble reduction.
