Impression, Sunrise (1872) by Claude Monet


The Iron Composers are all hunkered down writing a score based on Monet’s groundbreaking painting of the Le Havre harbor at the break of day. The surprise instrumentation is piano trio (Monument Piano Trio, to be precise).


When casting about for the secret ingredient, and sifting through all the wonderful suggestions from the general public, we kept coming back to the motto for this year’s festival: Set Sail for the Sun. The phrase comes from Stockhausen’s intuitive music in 1968, a shattering point in music where notes were no longer given to performers, just words.


Monet’s painting is one of the seminal works of the modernist movement. It’s a short leap from Monet’s ‘impression’ to the abstraction which was the great white whale of 20th century culture. So, we thought it was a good fit for a new music festival.