this thing that will not incinerate

                                                                                                           photo: Julio Kohl

Earth, residue of burning. Foundation for feet, plants and houses, tracing its origin in everything that resists in being purified by the violence of fire. It feels necessary that one pays attention to this thing whose nature is not to incinerate, this thing that stubbornly persists. A choice not subjected to reasoning or consciousness, entangled as it is in the very limits of matter itself, and makes it surrender less than entirely, held back by a peculiar mineral inertia.
 

As I was invited to write resto do incêndio (2013) for the exceptional Epifania Piano Trio (Alberto Kanji on violoncello, Felipe Scagliusi on piano and Simona Cavuoto on violin), I immediately thought of 2012 as the year of the dragon it turned out to be, overthrowing its igneous rage over São Paulo's favelas in uncomfortable consonance with portions of land coveted by capitalist speculation. Even though one may infer reminiscences of ancestral icons of fertility in concrete phalluses, this kind do not celebrate collective life drives, being otherwise sterile blockages to the fluidness of horizontal relationships that could possibly exist in the former agglomerations of precarious housings, now burnt down to ashes. Buildings shaped by the brute logic of exclusion, totems that symbolize terror instead of love toward neighbours (thrown into distance by the walls of city bunkers, euphemistically designated 'high standard homes' by the marketing jargon).

Departing from the absurd idea of finding  processual and formal correlates to this dense imagery, I desired a non-narrative dialectics based on the elements fire and earth and their particular ways of acting, building tension from gestural outbursts and prolongated permanences. That's how I got interested in the idea of formal accidents (unforeseen by perception, though premeditated in structure). So I had section durations, their subdivisions and densities moulded by the cold indifference of electronic chance operations. Arbitrarinesses and incongruences found were allowed to operate on an organic, progressive and linear harmonic development (based on the two-dimensional evolving of a single intervallic cycle). From this point on craftsmanship was free to encounter its own path, revealing itself both in rarefied textures and intricate polyphonies.

A beautiful première of resto do incêndio took place December 5th 2013 by the careful hands of Epifania Piano Trio, during the Música Estranha! festival. February 2014 the album 3+2/SP will be officialy released, featuring pieces by talented composers Marcus Siqueira, Mauício de Bonis, Rodrigo Lima and Thiago Cury. So be prepared for a beautiful release concert soon!



 

generalization of periodicity becomes a book

My Master's degree dissertation has become a book! Entitled Generalização da Periodicidade (generalization of periodicity), it is now available as an e-book in the Cultura Acadêmica website, maintained by Editora UNESP. This work investigates the concept of generalized peridiocity, conceived by Belgian composer Henri Pousseur in the 1960s as he intended to expand possibilities of serial music poetics. This dissertation includes an in-depth analisys of Pousseur's piano work Apostrophe et six réflexions and was oriented by Flo Menezes. Click here to download the e-book free of charge. Soon a physical copy printed on demand may be obtained via the same web address.

***

 
As I worked in this dissertation, I also wrote a this piece for solo vibraphone - réflexion apostrophique - consisting in a humble hommage to Pousseur. The point of departure is that musical form may be thought of as a correlate of sound synthesis, being a result of distinct periodicities that modulate each other. Although it's not an official part of the dissertation, this piece was premièred in the UNESP Arts Institute the day after it was presented. This is the live recording of this première, beautifully played by percussionist Rubens Celso.

camerata aberta plays canto nenhum

The name canto nenhum can be understood as "no place at all": a possible translation for the ancient word utopia. It can also refer to an absent voice. In this case, I chose as my model the aboio, a special kind of singing from the Northeast of Brazil. It's used to call the cattle, being closer to a kind of cry than to a form of chaint. Not intended for human listening, perhaps it's not exactly music. Thus maybe something else: a possible form of communication between man and nature, which draws us back to the terrain of utopia.

The aboios taken as a departing point are recordindg made by Mario de Andrade in the late 1930s during his "folkloristic missions". Inspired more by the ancestral connection between men and cattle described by Terence McKenna in his Book Food of the Gods, than by any nationalistic demagogy, I analysed the aboios as sound objects. Listening to them repeatedly, notes were taken on the different kinds of beginnings, sustains and terminations that could be observed. From these morphologies musical figures were developed so that I could bring to the realm of hearing an abstract structure based on prime number proportions and intervallic unfoldings of a single chord (using a procedure I nicknamed "harmonic LFO").

[summary of morphological variations observed in aboios' recordings]

This piece was premiered 19th July 2009 in the 40º Festival Internacional de Campos do Jordão, by the chamber group of the festival. In this occasion, canto nenhum was awarded with the Camargo Guarnieri Composition Prize. Four years later, it is delightful to listen to this piece live once again with the Camerata Aberta, conducted by Felix Krieger, October 29th at 21.00 pm in SESC Consolação, São Paulo.

For those who wish to remember how canto nenhum sounds or want to get a little more acquainted with it, here is the video of the première:

PS: Personally, the poetical investigation on the communication between two worlds that inspires this piece is tainted with a particularly dramatic nuance. During the process of composition my dear grandmother Janina crossed the threshold of this world as we know it. That's the reason why the score bears a dedication in her name.

ivory dust: body and code as presences

In my recent output, live electronic improvisation has conquered its space. It has been an exercise of rethinking presence on the stage through the machine, live body througn live code. Sound speculation in real time, the institution of a composer-performer-programer short-circuit. pó de marfim (2013) in one of these experiments, having an opera libretto and the empty space as raw materials. Done in colaboration with composer-performer  Marcela Lucatelli and presented April 13th 2013 in the NME12 concert. Here it's possible to watch the live performance, that took place in the SP Escola de Teatro:


 

Program note:

Excerpt from O Elefante de Marfim's first act or a musical-affective letter to F R on his big-headed beaches:"~ CATHERINE CLEMENTE, loses her memory and tries to retrieve it, which is the reason why she sees herself transmuted into Opera. With the help of Gilgameshivashtar she remembers that she is the embodiment of Oefro, Orfeo through the mirror. Has elephantiasis between her breasts, as a heart exposed outside. Naked. The ivory parts are so alien to the abstract game of chess as the hand that governs them." 

powers of two

: (2013) is an acousmatic miniature composed specially for the  NMEaniversário2@bandcamp album, intended to celebrate NME's second anniversary and feturing 22 works by 25 artists from around the globe. All pieces are inspired by the number 2 and last around 2 minutes.

: revisits my retorno em linha reta (2012), taking the previous work as its own basic sound material. The entire last year's piece is submitted to several electroacoustic transformations, which have the number 2 as a common reference. Eight time compressions are performed, coresponding to powers of the number two, featuring exponents 0 to 7 (generating sound events 1 to 128 seconds long). Some of these materials are further transformed by means of oscillators set to frequencies such as 2, 22 e 222 Hz. From that point on, initiates the process of cutting, editing and mixing that sculpts the final shape of the piece.

Curiously enough, to make the numerical inspiration of the piece even more consistent, the whole process was carried out in just two days! Enjoy:

artificial birds and everyday rhythm

In his last writings, French sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) uses a very precise aspect to analyse city life: rhythm [1]. Through his eyes and ears, everyday life reveals countless relationships between several kinds of rhythm: cyclic and linear, repetitive and different, mechanical and organic and so on. One chapter presents the rhytmical unfolding of everyday life witnessed through Lefebvre's window. Drama and poetry are unveiled in the rhythmic tensions between workers, students, tourists, cars and traffic-lights - which in turn keep faithful to their mechanical rhythms through the night, regulating traffic even after it has long ceased.

These ideas motivated me to record 24 hours of sounds from my own window and use this material as a basis for my acousmatic piece retorno em linha reta (2012), composed for the NMEaniversário#1 album. I was particularly interested in the tensions inherent to our experience of time, both linear an cyclical. Even if a day is always 24 hours long and every year consists in 365 days (sometimes 366), our relative experience of the lived units seems to constantly change. The second year of one's life doubles the time experimented in the first year. In turn, the third year expands experience only at a 1.5 ratio, and every year this ratio decreases. It was more or less like this that I tried to explain to myself in my teenage years why time experienced today always feels faster than some prior age. Sensorial transformations produced by different speeds in experimenting time are explored in retorno em linha reta. In its 365 seconds, I create a year turned inside out, in which the 24 hours of a single day are experimented up to 365 times faster. 

Unpredicted qualities are revealed in this process. One of the most intriguing to me was the clear sound image of a forest full of bird which resulted from playng back the original material 120 times faster. Taking advantage or its fake realism, this material became the initial section of another work with bird sounds as a starting point: das trevas, sabiá (2012). Even though it may be listened to as an actual acousmatic composition, it is really the live recording of an improvisation [2] performed in the NMEpássaro concert, which took place July 29th 2012 in the Parque da Água Branca, São Paulo.



[1] LEFÈBVRE, Henri. Rhytmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. Continuum: London/New York, 2004.
[2] Using pre-recorded samples, SuperCollider programming and a MIDI controller.
 

 

 

NMEchá: sounding teas, aromatic music

This week my new acousmatic work espectro jasmim (2012) will be premièred in the NMEchá concerts, in which the NMEchá CD will be released and eight brand new acousmatic works by eight composers, conceived specially for this project, will be given their premières.

These will be unique oportunitys to listen to these works in eight-channel diffusion, while tasting the tea flavours on which the works are based.

In addition do my espectro jasmim, the program will feature works by luis felipe labaki (lapsang souchong), adriano monteiro (chá de hibisco e anis estrelado), julia teles (miração; chá de coca), felipe merker castellani e manuel pessôa (espaços entre o sonoro ii, versão apenas sonora - about black tea), sérgio abdalla (O chá mais forte de Buenos Aires - about assam tea), tiago de mello (dongsuh, ou um compositor em estafa) e fernando visockis (chacóvisqui - about yerba mate tea). Read more about the composers and their teas here.

The admitance in all these concerts is free, being sponsored via the crowdfunding website catarse.

Campinas: 
May 23th, wednesday, 12h30, no auditório da biblioteca central da UNICAMP

São Paulo (Capital): 
May 27th, sunday, 15h and 17h, associação cultural cecília, 
rua vitorino camilo, 449 (close to marechal deodoro metro station)