Manuella Blackburn on 'Kitchen Alchemy': While composing this piece, I began to think of the analogy of alchemy and its applicability to the compositional process of acousmatic music. I wanted to create something seemingly precious and elaborate that showed no similarity to the ordinary source sounds of kitchen utensils and appliances. 

Kitchen Alchemy (excerpt) for Fixed Media by Manuella Blackburn

I. Kami - II. Odradék - III. Shang Yang - IV. Haokah

CD Imaginário
Lidia Bazarian, piano
Selo LAMI, 2011

Do Livro Dos Seres Imaginários (2010), for prepared solo piano

HUBBUB  - whobub : BUB 2

Ensemble Provakant 
Maria Kalesnikava, alto flute
Kasia Kadlubowska, vibraphone

tonArt Festival, Esslingen (Germany), 2014

forquilha, couro e tripa de mico (2014), for alto flute and vibraphone

Manuella Blackburn - Time Will Tell - Honorary Mention at Sonic Arts Award 2014 - Sonic Research

Lume de espelhos, per orchestra d'archi (2015)
Orquestra Acadêmica da UNESP (instagram.com/academicadaunesp)
Lutero Rodrigues, regente
Gravação ao vivo no Teatro Maria de Lourdes Sekeff, no Instituto de Artes da UNESP, em 15 de dezembro de 2015.
Partitura: https://www.babelscores.com/catalogs/instrumental/orchestral-music/6744-lume-de-espelhos
Video [score]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIk_J5Da-Fs

“Lume de Espelhos” pendulates between various degrees of control of the multitudinous sonorities of a string ensemble. The piece starts with a gradual exploration of oppositions between measured and unmeasured time, moving on to the contrast between pitched and unpitched sounds, and also between a solo string quintet and the full string orchestra. Gradually, these oppositions give place to polyphonic unravelings of the natural frequencies of bowed string instruments, eventually giving birth to a fragmentary melodic line (and also to its multiplications) and finally returning to the dilution of measured time.
The word games in the portuguese title “Lume de Espelhos” could be approximately translated into English as “Looking glass light”, or into Italian as “Tastiera di luce”. “Lume” means light or flame, but it also signifies the surface of a mirror. The portuguese word for mirror is “espelho”, but the same word is used for the fingerboard (“tastiera”) of bowed string instruments.

Lume de espelhos, para orquestra de cordas (2015)

intermezzo, com Alexandre Zamith, CD Pianisticontemporâneo

Camerata Aberta
Sonic Festival, New York (USA), 2011

Lan (2011), for 4 instruments

Twang (2010)

This composition was born out of a metaphorical idea: what if the rough, hard, noisy sounds that I had just recorded from instruments made out of wood—such as the cello and the acoustic bass—would represent reminiscent screamings of dead trees (as if the instrument’s woods had preserved the memories of the trees they were made of). 
That idea must have come from the life-changer book I was reading at that time  “The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman” in which the author interviews one of the nowadays most important indigenous leaders. It has been a transforming experience reading it, especially in a moment that several indigenous groups and the Amazon forest itself are being attacked in my home country, Brazil. 

After going a little deeper into this metaphor, I realized how intrinsically connected are the history of music and trees. All western music tradition is somehow dependent on wood, not only for producing instruments (wood, strings, percussion) but also for preserving and enabling its language development through the use of paper (scores). Consequently, trees have been providing us two of the most important things we need to survive: oxygen and music.

All sounds contained in the piece are tree-related. Birds, as Yanomami puts, are tree’s inseparable companions. There are several sounds of closing of books, page turnings, instruments made of wood, and some instrumental gestures allusive of falling trees (or screaming trees) to reinforce this dialectical situation.

Screaming Trees

Hydatos by Joao Pedro Oliveira - Mention in Acousmatic Music Category at PIARS Award 2012

Alex Buck (1980) is a composer, performer, and improviser from São Paulo, Brazil. His music is largely influenced by experimental trends of many distinct genres such as acousmatic music, contemporary jazz, Brazilian music,  free improvisation, and contemporary classical music. As a performer-composer, he works mainly within the constraints of acousmatic music and experimental electroacoustic jazz realms.
He received his B.Mus and MFA in electroacoustic composition from UNESP where he studied with his mentor Flo Menezes. In 2019 he received the first prize in Musica Nova international festival (Czech Republic) with his acousmatic composition named Screaming Trees. In 2018, his work Fantasia Essata was among the finalists in Metamorphoses competition (Belgium).
He has an extensive career as a drummer in Brazil, where he collaborated with some of the most relevant artists in the Brazilian-jazz scene: Arismar do Espírito Santo, Hamilton de Holanda, Mestrinho, Michael Pipoquinha, Wilson das Neves, Filó Machado, Sandro Haick, and many others. Buck is a member of acclaimed experimental Brazilian jazz trio Trio Ciclos with Bruno Migotto (bass) and edison Sant’anna (piano), and was a member of Bamboo quinteto with Bernardo Ramos (guitar), Bruno Aguilar (bass), Josué Lopez (sax), and Vitor Gonçalves (piano). 
Buck was the artistic director of  EMEXP, the Experimental Music Ensemble of EMESP (São Paulo’ State School of Music) where he also used to teach composition, écriture, contemporary improvisation, and music analysis. 
He is currently living in California where he develops his Doctoral degree in the Performer-Composer DMA program at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).