Michael Gordon's Trance — Ensemble Klang + United Instruments of Lucilin

Explosive and hypnotic masterpiece for large ensemble

A double anniversary in 2026: Michael Gordon’s iconic work Trance premiered thirty years ago, and the composer himself turns seventy. A musical whirlwind of breakneck rhythms, crackling brass and furious electric bass and guitar, Trance hasn’t lost an ounce of its power. Top-tier Dutch ensemble Klang and United Instruments of Lucilin from Luxembourg are more than up to the task. They combine Trance with world premieres by former Composer Laureate of the Netherlands Calliope Tsoupaki and Irish composer David Fennessy. 
  
Gordon composed Trance after receiving a message in a dream from someone he describes as ‘a cross between György Ligeti, Louis Andriessen and my own teacher, Martin Bresnick’. Write a work for a large ensemble, he was instructed. And so he did. Trance is a seven-part tour de force of shifting rhythmic layers, equally explosive and hypnotic. Calliope Tsoupaki and David Fennessy write for the same impactful ensemble of 23 amplified musicians on keyboards, trumpets, trombones, guitars, pan flutes and saxophones. 

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