Liminality - USA Tour 2025

Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA

Ensemble du Bout du Monde presents Liminality, a program exploring the tension of existing between worlds—between past and future, tradition and innovation. They will perform the newly revised saxophone quartet Thalassografia - Small Nepenthian (2019/25).

XAS (1987) - Iannis Xenakis
Zeruan* (2020) - María Eugenia Luc
“…B.S. unfolded…” [Kandinsky-Etüde 9]* (2020) - Frederik Neyrinck
Thalassografia - Small Nepenthian* (2018/2025) - Stratis Minakakis
Transumanar * (2025) - Giulia Lorusso
you’ve been talking in your sleep (2010) - David Biedenbender
High Octane + (2025) - Zachary Askew Cook

* - indicates US premiere
+ - indicates World premiere

About the Work

Thalassografia-Small Nepenthian translates as “sea-etching.” Commissioned by EBM and first performed in Tallinn, Estonia, the work has been freshly revised for this tour. Minakakis conjures the Aegean seascape in shifting layers of sound: saxophone without mouthpiece whorls of air, salt‑spray slap‑tongues, and shimmering harmonics ebb and flow like waves against a rocky shore. The work’s lines overlap and recede, tracing sonic currents that suggest both the vastness and the restless instability of open water.