anti concerto for percussion and ensemble of 10 instruments
2nd prize Wilde Lieder Marx Competition by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
• Audio • Video
• Program notes
• Press
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The dearest dream (2018) Read More »
for orchestra
1st prize Rychenberg Competition, Winterthur, Switzerland
• Audio
• Video
• Program notes
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for bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello and electric guitar
commissioned by counter)induction ensemble, NYC
• Out loud project page
(videos, program notes, pictures)
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Out loud #3 (2020) Read More »
for bass, soprano, violin and piano Send download link to:
based on the homonymous novel by Albert Camus
winner, Nationaltheater Mannheim Competition 2020
• Blog Camus
L’ètranger – musical “momentum” opera (2020) Read More »
for amplified alto flute and recyclable materials (textiles, glass, plastic, paper, and metal)
dedicated to Alu Montorfano
• Video
• Program notes
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Anthropology of trash (2020) Read More »
for alto flute, electric guitar, cello, piano and percussion
rev. commissioned by NewMakerEnsemble
• Video Around music #2
• Program notes
• Press
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Around music #2 (2006 rev. 2018) Read More »
Around music #1 (2006)
for alto flute, trumpet, violoncello, percussion and piano
commissioned by Stichting Perpetuumm
Around music #2 (2006/rev. 2018)
for alto flute, electric guitar, cello, piano and percussion
new version commissioned by New Maker ensemble
“What is for the eye must not duplicate what is for the ear”
“The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone,
makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences. ”.
Robert Bresson
Around music attempts to be a philosophical-humoristic reflection about the rituals of modern music and the concert situations. Actions related to the practice of music like counting, failing, facing technical difficulties, repeating or dropping instruments are the new musical material for this piece, written in a score.
Around music is music to be heard, music to be seen.
Terms such as “absolute music”, or “abstract music” can be seen as dialectical responses to major philosophical systems, which were influential in central Europe during the mid 19th century. Music – in these people’s minds – should therefore be an art form, free and independent from everything else. It should only respond to its own laws and, for bearing an essentially pure and formally perfect nature, any produced discourse would prove incorruptible.
The interest of any musician subscribing to this thought ghetto, should, above all, in the abatement and suppression of any noise, sonic and visual, but also semantic and political.
At the moment each piece finds itself realized, only that which most resembles the imagined formal ideal must survive! However, in each concert, there always happens a number of things which are not music in those terms. People have solely learned how to ignore them.
New Maker Ensemble, London July 2019
Sistema Project
If we think a system is a cohesive form of a group of inter-related elements, then, depending on the temporal and spatial framing, anything can be a system!
These types of considerations have been a focal point in the culture of production, conception and critique of the New Maker Ensemble. This time, Sistema (system) has served as a starting point for all the work developed in this project, from the new music program to the complementary educational activities.
The way we challenged the various creators, we also challenge you to think of systems: where are they? how are they created? how are they useful? how do they work? what do they tell us? how do they constitute themselves? what are they made of? how do they manifest themselves? what do they produce? how complex or simple are they? how do they evolve? what direction do they have? how are they part of us? what autonomy do they have? how are we part of them? etc.
• Video Around music #1
• Video Around music #2
• Press – Ratatouille TV – Around music
• Press – Ratatouille TV – De metafysica van de humor
• Press – Het parool
• Press – NRC
• Out loud – project page
• Gestalt (2014)
• Score Around music #1
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• Score Around music #2
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Around music #1 and #2 (2006 and rev. 2018) Read More »
“Electricity is like the air which is vibrating during sound waves.” (William Beaty)
In my piece Afterlife, a trumpet speaks “electricity language” playing in counterpoint with a neon lamp. It is difficult to say who is playing when.
Most of my inspiration for this piece comes from hours of recordings I made with trumpet player Amy Horvey, back in 2005. Among other pieces for trumpet, I’ve just discovered the piece “Space is a Diamond” by Lucia Dlugoszewski, a sort of written improvisation (thanks Edward Carroll for the score and the comments about the process of the piece!).
I realized the sounds I wanted to use for my new piece were somehow very
close to the sonorities that some modern improvisers use. For example,
the research on whisper tones by Charlie Porter in his hotel room in the
middle of the night are very poetic and good material for a composer
and the impro of Charmaine Lee with Nate Wooley is very intriguing music that I wish I had written.
In this post I am not talking about the differences between written music and improvisation, because I find it a kind of dusty topic, rather boring to me. Instead of putting music in boxes, I would like to discuss inspirations and common visions.
Writing music has always been a slow process, certainly not a real-time thing, which generally needs at least two souls: the composer and the interpreter. My “musical instrument” has always been the paper and the pencil. This is the medium that makes me flow: organizing the listening from the inside out, in silent mode. I find that the instant when I write ideas on a paper is a performative act in itself, full of emotion and urgency, mental but somehow also physical.
In this post I am not talking about the differences between written music and improvisation, because I find it a kind of dusty topic, rather boring to me. Instead of putting music in boxes, I would like to discuss inspirations and common visions.
Writing music has always been a slow process, certainly not a real-time thing, which generally needs at least two souls: the composer and the interpreter. My “musical instrument” has always been the paper and the pencil. This is the medium that makes me flow: organizing the listening from the inside out, in silent mode. I find that the instant when I write ideas on a paper is a performative act in itself, full of emotion and urgency, mental but somehow also physical.
Play me!
At a certain point in my process, I need to put “everything together” on paper. After my first sketch I exhaustively keep on refining that “initial impulse”. At the end of the composition process, the piece is going to be different from that initial sketch but not far from its spirit.
For the improviser “that everything together” exists somehow in her or his head, shaped by years of playing and reflecting upon that. We all, composers and improvisers, have structures and a sound repertoire. We merely solve things in other ways.
At a certain point in my process, I need to put “everything together” on paper. After my first sketch I exhaustively keep on refining that “initial impulse”. At the end of the composition process, the piece is going to be different from that initial sketch but not far from its spirit.
For the improviser “that everything together” exists somehow in her or his head, shaped by years of playing and reflecting upon that. We all, composers and improvisers, have structures and a sound repertoire. We merely solve things in other ways.
For Morton Feldman the moment of composing on paper is a kind of performative writing. He uses an ink-pen in a slow process with full concentration: a way of being in the moment.
For me it is more about the lines-mess (mamarracho), the speed of the pencil, the adrenaline. The
pencil writes down the sounds coming from my mind, and my silent
hearing follows the movement of the pencil on the paper in a wonderful
counterpoint of drawing and mental singing.
Further down you can follow the sketch of my piece for trumpet and neon which motivated this post.
Some facts about the piece:
• The piece lasts 9 minutes, but the drawing of the sketch took two hours.
• The drawing of the sketch required two hours but the research prior to it, months spread over years.
• The nine-minute sketch can be perceived “in a glance.”
• … extensive work will follow, working with the trumpet player, refining techniques, reshaping the form and finding the right notation.
Writing for a lamp is not easy! Believe me! It is simpler to notate music for a string quartet than for an impulsive light that does something different every time. It isn´t easy either to write a score for a trumpet with an electricity complex!
I like to think that composition is a very slow improvisation, crystallized in a single performative act that is the moment of the concert, unique and fresh as if it was self-originated.
In this post I am not talking about the differences between written music and improvisation, because I find it a kind of dusty topic, rather boring to me. Instead of putting music in boxes, I would like to discuss inspirations and common visions.
Writing music has always been a slow process, certainly not a real-time thing, which generally needs at least two souls: the composer and the interpreter. My “musical instrument” has always been the paper and the pencil. This is the medium that makes me flow: organizing the listening from the inside out, in silent mode. I find that the instant when I write ideas on a paper is a performative act in itself, full of emotion and urgency, mental but somehow also physical.
At a certain point in my process, I need to put “everything together” on paper. After my first sketch I exhaustively keep on refining that “initial impulse”. At the end of the composition process, the piece is going to be different from that initial sketch but not far from its spirit.
For the improviser “that everything together” exists somehow in her or his head, shaped by years of playing and reflecting upon that. We all, composers and improvisers, have structures and a sound repertoire. We merely solve things in other ways.
Electricity, molecules, and feelings Read More »
for violin, trombone, piano, radio, cassette player and a rocking chair
commissioned by NFPK, Holland
There are three people sitting in a room; they are just staying but also remembering the past and dreaming about the future all at the same time. It is always difficult to say what now and here means because our hearts gets always confused about organizing emotions on a timeline.
Koen rewinds, anticipates and plays the cassette player as a metaphor of past (and future?) memories. Bas plays a radio that catches the air in an ever-flowing present. Nora moves back and forth from the piano in a rocking chair, looped in her own clock.
Music is a powerful time machine, traveling through chronologically organized sounds, but mainly through the mixed archeology of our emotions.
• Gestalt (2014)
• Esta tarde leo a Adorno/This afternoon I read Adorno (2013)
• El libro de los gestos / Book of gestures (2008)
• Split piano (2011)
• Gespleten piano (2010)
• La arquitectura del aire / The architecture of air (2009)
Time machine (2011) – program notes Read More »
mini piano theater for piano, tapes, three lights and an optional mirror
comissioned by Festival Música contemporánea Palma de Mallorca
When I was a child my father had built a door in the yard of my apartment with the lid of an old washing machine. Once through it, the little door led to a parallel yard –which in fact was the same one. In appearance the yard was alike, but if one paid attention, the same things started behaving in a strange, a rather magical way. The drawing of the tiles had the power to hypnotize you, and the insects from the plants could read your mind. Not to mention the effect if my mother showed up with a snack… she terrified me because I thought she was a “double”. I only could stay for a few seconds in that parallel world and then, running and scared to death, went through the little door back to the “authentic yard” to have a snack with my real mum. While I was composing Gespleten piano, I remembered this story from my childhood because in this piece there are real objects and their duplicates. A mirror duplicates the visual space, the cassette players emulate the aural space. There are also extra-musical “twin” objects. I like to think that in the game of the piece it is not clear which is the original and which is the copy.
Lately, I like to explain my music through anecdotes because they are as confusing as the program notes but they are more easy-going.
Cuando era chica mi papá había construido una puertita de chapa con la tapa de un viejo lavarropas, en el patio de mi departamento. Una vez atravesada, la mini puerta te conducía a un patio paralelo – que en realidad era el mismo. En apariencia era un patio igual, pero si uno prestaba atención las cosas se comportaban de una manera extraña, casi mágica. El dibujo de las baldosas, por ejemplo, te hipnotizaba y los bichitos de las plantas te leían la mente. Ni que decir si aparecía mi mamá con la leche… me aterrorizaba porque pensaba que era una doble. Solo me podía quedar unos instantes en ese mundo paralelo y luego, corriendo y muerta de miedo, a través de la puertita volvía al patio “de verdad” para tomar la leche con mi mamá real.
Mientras componía Gespleten piano recordé esta anécdota de mi infancia, ya que en mi obra hay dos realidades paralelas: los objetos reales y sus dobles. El espejo repite el espacio visual, los grabadores de cinta duplican el espacio auditivo. También hay objetos gemelos extra musicales Me gusta pensar que en el juego de la obra, no se sabe cuál es la copia y cuál es el original. Me gusta explicar mis obras con anécdotas, porque al igual que las notas de programa, son confusas. Pero son más llevaderas.
• Video (excerpts) by Nora Mulder
Gespleten piano is mentioned in the following article (English and Spanish version of the same article):
• My house in a score. Low-tech paraphernalia in chamber music (English) – The ear reader (Dutch online modern music magazine) August 2014 – Link to article in PDF
• Mi casa en una partitura. Parafernalia low-tech en música de cámara (Español) – Revista Espacio Sonoro nº 32. Camilo Irizo, editor. Enero 2014 – Link to article in PDF
• Gestalt (2014)
• Esta tarde leo a Adorno/This afternoon I read Adorno (2013)
• Time machine (2011)
• El libro de los gestos / Book of gestures (2008)
• Split piano (2011)
• La arquitectura del aire / The architecture of air (2009)
Gespleten piano (2010) Read More »