On Oct. 16, Tim Hecker returns to San Fedele after ten years, presenting his most recent production “No Highs” redesigned for the spatialized sound system of the San Fedele Auditorium. The Canadian artist, known for his full-bodied and spiritual compositions, takes an openly contesting stance this time against the passivity in listening to so much commercial ambient background music that invades the worldwide streaming market. Flanked by the samples of saxophonist Colin Stetson, Tim Hecker offers the listener an initiatory musical journey to unmask the seductions of the sirens and arrive at the completion of a cathartic journey, at the purity of an ethereal music. 

Introducing the evening is the listening with acusmonium of three pieces by Maryanne Amacher from the album “Sound Characters (Making The Third Ear),” in which the composer collected various music made for multimedia installations and the result of her research in the field of the psychoacoustic phenomenon of otoacoustic emissions (high frequencies producing virtual sounds in the inner ear). The American artist had studied with K. Stockhausen for two years in Philadelphia, and collaborated with John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Two of the three pieces chosen constitute a monument of complex layered ambient.