Chamber Orchestra of ZPSM no. 1 in Warsaw conducted by Grzegorz Dąbrowski
piano: Adam Łukawski

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VgmzKe0sqM
Download: adamlukawski.bandcamp.com

Concertino

Concertino for piano, strings and percussion

“Making conscious choices by designing links within the theather of life – this is the function of art according to the young Polish composer Adam Łukawski, who studies with Richard Ayres and Willem Jeths at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Fractal no 7 is a part of a brand new sixteen-part cycle, in which the underlying form principle of mathematical fractals leads to an infinite spiral. The composer considers the shape of these pieces as the imitation of our universe, because the listener can only perceive a fragment of the whole structure. There are four groups on stage: a traditional wind quintet, a ‘glass’ quintet and another percussive ‘quintet’. Each group plays for itself and has little to no interaction with the other ensembles. The note material for all groups consists of sixteen elements that the composer returns according to self-imposed mathematical rules. Łukawski elaborates on the techniques of limited aleatoricism and coordination technique developed by the American composers John Cage and Christian Wolff and his compatriot Witold Lutosławski.” ~ Michel Khalifa

Adam Lukawski - fractal no 12

"Fractal no 12" from "16 Fractals for 4 Ensembles"

Commissioned by Gesti Festival Amsterdam.

Performed by Elisabeth Hetherington, Juho Myllyla and Dennis Matos at Splendor, Amsterdam.

“Avenice is one of the characters from the universe of pieces titled “Lella”. The story, is about the future utopic society, in which everything is directly interpreted as the artistic manifestation. The story is a base for the whole project in which every artistic piece can exist separately, but also is a part of the bigger structure titled “Lella” (in sanscrit it means a way of describing all reality, including the cosmos, as the outcome of the creative play). All melodies used in “Speech of Avenice” belongs to the character of Avenice and have their corresponding melodies in the piano piece with the same title. Avenice is the character who is curious and adventurous. She’s creating the artistic atmosphere around herself. She’s intuitive and it seems that when everybody is trying to achieve a certain level of artistic fulfillment, she doesn’t care, because she is just playing the game. The piece is a conversation between Avenice and a symbolic Source of the Answers (blockflutes) with the live electronics background of An Infinite Echo, which with time also starts to participate in the conversation.

Lella

Speech of Avenice, music theatre for voice, blockflutes, live electronics and lights

Commissioned by Maat Saxophone Quartet

The title of the piece refers to the ancient proto-medical theory of temperaments in which 4 types of fluids/personalities were reasons for different behaviours in humans. In the work there are 4 characters: sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic – each of them playing at their own tempo. They follow each other, by constantly changing the leader, in order to be able to keep the musical work (here: metaphor of the human psyche and body kept in balance) going.

Humors

Humors for saxophone quartet

The title “Acharya Mrityuh” is the term often used in the Vedic literature. In Sanskrit it means “the best teacher of life is death” or just “Master Death”.

Performed during Composers' Festival 2018 at Orgelpark, Amsterdam by:

María Cristina González – flute

Mateusz Pusiewicz – saxophone

Ramin Amin Tafreshi – piano

Lucía Mateo Calvo – double bass

Composition received the 3rd Prize in the Polish National Composition Competition UFM 2015.

Acharya Mrityuh for flute, saxophone, piano and double bass

In the XXth Century Aleister Crowley changed the popular, esoteric term „Abracadabra” into „Abrahadabra”. Just one letter difference made the kabalistic calculations symmetrical and thanks to this, word that initiates the magic gained it’s real power in the rituals. Air-pressure and register change controlled constantly by the computer in the midi-organ piece made for the instrument playing itself causes a special effect - magical title is not what you hear from the notes itself, but from the overtones floating around the concert hall made by sometimes almost not hearable actual notes of the organ with their register changes - these, transformed into waves of sound create the effect of three layers in the piece: percussive (symbol of subconsiousness), waves of the modulated sound of the organ (consciousness) and overtones over the general sound (magical superconsciousness).

Abrahadabra for Utopa midi-organ

“Their [Adam Łukawski composer and Julia Borzucka graphic artist] collaboration was established to convey an artistic greeting from homo-sapiens to the TRAPPIST-1 system and its putative inhabitants. TRAPPIST-1, located in the Earth’s vicinity becomes a symbol of a new era in our understanding of the Universe, namely the hope that if there are millions of planets capable to host life, that on some of them life did indeed emerge, and that we are not alone in Space. To illustrate how integrated the Universe can be in its complexity, the sound and the image complement each other and were produced as one integrated piece. The enormous, 12m long graphic (accessible below) is a literal interpretation of the electronic score. It can be followed by the public from left to right, from the beginning to the end, and was elaborated based on the pattern of the music. There are seven short parts in the piece that, like in Egyptian hieroglyphs, present a story about the new system.” ~ http://www.trappist.one/

Trappist-1 for Sauer midi-organ, tape and large computer graphic

“Making conscious choices by designing links within the theater of life – this is the function of art according to the young Polish composer Adam Łukawski, who studies with Richard Ayres and Willem Jeths at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Fractal no 7 is a part of a brand new sixteen-part cycle, in which the underlying form principle of mathematical fractals leads to an infinite spiral. The composer considers the shape of these pieces as the imitation of our universe, because the listener can only perceive a fragment of the whole structure. There are four groups on stage: a traditional wind quintet, a ‘glass’ quintet and another percussive ‘quintet’. Each group plays for itself and has little to no interaction with the other ensembles. The note material for all groups consists of sixteen elements that the composer returns according to self-imposed mathematical rules. Łukawski elaborates on the techniques of limited aleatoricism and coordination technique developed by the American composers John Cage and Christian Wolff and his compatriot Witold Lutosławski.” ~ Michel Khalifa

16 Fractals for 4 Ensembles

"Fractal no 7" from "16 Fractals for 4 Ensembles"

"Fractal no 13" from "16 Fractals for 4 Ensembles"

Composer based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Studied with Richard Ayres and Willem Jeths at Conservatorium van Amsterdam and with Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. Laureate of several international composition competitions. His music is published by Donemus Publishing in The Hague.

Adam Łukawski

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