Claudia Sofía Alvarez is a Peruvian composer and participant of the 5th International Young Composers Academy Ticino, whose music seeks to explore the power of sound in the human experience, investigating sound aspects such as timbre, texture, rhythm, and gesture in vocal, instrumental, and acousmatic contexts.

MANTRA. 2.0 is the second work of her series "M.A.N.-T.R.A". Through them, Claudia Sofia Alvarez Cuba intends to explore particular vibrations and resonant symbols that may lead to a state of mind or particular perception of the sound experience. Each of them has a slogan or mantra that stimulated its genesis; specifically, M.A.N.-T.R.A. 2.0 is built around the idea of: "Expanding our limits". In that sense, the piece transits through different states, starting from a static point, followed by progressive more energetic motions that drive into a free-floating and suspended state that finishes in a more resonant and expanded sound.

Claudia Sofía Alvarez Cuba (Peru 1991): M.A.N. - T.R.A. 2.0 : Expanding Our Limits

A BBC Radio 3 commission for the BBC Concert Orchestra.
Recorded by the BBC Concert Orchestra with conductor, Barry Wordsworth at the Watford Coliseum, 19th May 2021.
Broadcast BBC Radio 3 Afternoon Concert 22nd October 2021.
Concert premiere will be given by the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London, with Guest Principal Conductor, Anna-Maria Helsing, 5th May 2022.

A Forest Reawakens-BBC Concert Orchestra performance

Qebui is the Egyptian God of the North Wind. Composed by Eduardo Soutullo, winner of the first Lawson-May Award for Composition. Recorded live on 24th September 2021. Performed by Dominika Fehér, violin, Christian Elliott, cello and Huw Watkins, piano.

Qebui

Performed by Sasha Savaloni, winner of the 2018 Sevilla International Guitar Competition, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in May 2022.

Earth, Horizon, Sky, Moon- for solo guitar

Scherzo Fantastique for Wind Ensemble - MIDI Demo

The Moorlands (2016)

Illinois Modern Ensemble, Stephen Taylor, conductor.  8 February 2017.
Sonic Illinois Festival, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

Cold Horizon, for chamber orchestra, grew out of a piece for vibraphone and piano entitled Cold, which I wrote in Paris in January 2001.  The basic musical ideas and icy, shimmering instrumental colors of Cold have been stretched out into a supple, continuously flowing, and dramatic form, and colored as if seen at twilight under a fading and distant light.  

In a sense, Cold Horizon explores resonance as a model or metaphor for developing musical gestures and forms.  Often resonance is used to create a sense of perspective, reminding us that music takes place not only in time but also in space. Musical lines that are slightly out of alignment shadow each other as they seem to echo in a reverberant space.  Similarly, rhythmic processes and subtle changes of orchestration create the illusion of musical gestures that approach or recede.  The opening of the piece, a quasi-Doppler effect, is one example.  Another typical idea is the filtering of complex harmonies into simple intervals, floating points of stability that form a thread of consonance woven across the span of the piece.  The use of quarter tones blurs the line between harmony and instrumental timbres to create a sense of depth and shadow against the well-tempered, “normal” pitches.

Cold Horizon has passed through a series of incarnations, beginning with an initial sketch premiered in 2002 by the Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon-Provence under Sylvio Gualda at the Centre Acanthes contemporary music festival in France.  The complete piece was premiered in 2003 by the University of California, Berkeley Symphony conducted by David Milnes, followed by a revised and expanded version performed by the Minnesota Orchestra at their Composer Institute in 2006 with David Alan Miller.  I revised the piece one last time in early 2017 for this performance, making some minor adjustments to its pacing, clarifying the orchestration and several harmonic details, and pruning back some pretentious complexity in the notation.

Cold Horizon (2017 Version)

Based on Dadaist Raoul Hausmann's optophonetic poem, 'Grün' of 1918

Scored for:

Soprano
Soprano Saxophone
Alto Saxophone
Trumpet in C
Accordion
Double Bass

Live recording from Shoreditch Town Hall

By observing each word or letter, looking at its typography - shape, size, how it has been set on the page, the meaning of the word and what it may represent, each element has its own musical idea.  As in the tone poem, with words and letters winding around each other, or continuing from/after one another, each musical idea flows off of or continues from one another. This transforms a seemingly chaotic image on the page into a linear, developmental, and connected progression from one idea to another.

Grün for ensemble(2017)

James M. David, composer - more info at www.jamesmdavid.com

Wesley Ferreira, solo clarinet
Christopher Nicholas, conductor
The Colorado State University Wind Ensemble

Recorded February 2012 in Griffin Concert Hall, Fort Collins, CO

Auto '66: Concerto for Clarinet, Movement I. Lamborghini Miura

“Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.”
 - Naomi Shihab Nye

Have you ever sought anonymity in a crowded streets of the city? Tried to blend in with the wallpaper at a party? Thought about going out, but couldn’t bear the thought of being seen? There is an art to remaining in the shadows, to fading from view, to disappearing completely. 
This piece was composed for and dedicated to Ellen Ruth Rose (viola) and Meredith Clark (harp). It is a very quite piece. Throughout the piece, each instrument tries to hide behind the other. The take turns fading in and out of the texture. Occasionally, they blend into one another. The starting note takes on different shades and textures, before dissipating into trills and losing its focus. A little more than half way through the piece, a short, simple, sentimental passage is exposed, like a tender memory. The simple counterpoint of this passage actually underpins much of the piece as a whole, even though one is unlikely to hear it. While it does its best to hide itself throughout, in this moment it is starkly exposed. One might consider this an authentic moment that has done its utmost to elude exposure—not unlike how we shield our own authentic, most vulnerable selves from public perception in preliminary social engagements. 
The piece trails of with a series of slow harp arpeggios and with the viola sustaining long single notes. It fades and eventually evaporates leaving the first note of the piece lingering as a harmonic played by the viola.

the art of disappearing (2020)

Open Letters (Orchestral Folk - Instrumental)

Tree of Hundreds (2020) for solo guitar.

Written for the International Guitar Foundation.
Premiered by guitarist Pavel Ralev in the IGF YAP Concert, October 2020 at Kings Place, London.

Tree Of Hundreds (live)

Composer, cellist, clarinettist, conductor, Master of Music in Composition from The Royal Academy of Music

Grün for ensemble(2017)

Alice M. Hunter

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