Jul 11, 2015
ensemble Konsax.Wien
Lars Mlekusch, soloist
2015

Between stridencies and jazz orchestrations in the style of the nouvelle vague films of the 60's, HEAVY emerges: a work that projects an apparently improvised sound energy, where the saxophone orchestra takes center stage, competing in a constant sonic interaction with the solo saxophone. The presence of electronics in the work goes beyond being a mere decorative element; it constantly reacts, creating counterpoints that enrich the musical experience. This work is a psychedelic and liberating universe that is part of Fuentes' catalog, merging his creative concerns by mixing styles such as spectral, jazz and electroacoustic. (LondonHall Editions)

HEAVY (for saxophone soloist, saxophone ensemble and soundtrack, 2015)

CHOPPO

Drumcode Live this week is Amelie Lens live from Complex, Maastricht. Expect to hear tracks from Amelie Lens, Ramiro Lopez and 200 And One.

1. Amelie Lens & Farrago - Purge - ARTS
2. Unknown Artist - Untitled
3. Linus Quick - Weeping Birds - Eclipse Recordings
4. Amelie Lens - Drift - Second State 
5. Niereich - Drehmoment (Ricardo Garduno Remix) - Amazone Records
6. Frazier - Element Selection - Elementra Records
7. Ramiro Lopez - September - Drumcode
8. Setaoc Mass - Structured Deceit - SK_eleven
9. Amelie Lens - Contradiction - Second State
10. 2000 And One - Get Down (Len Faki Hardspace Tool) - Figure
11. Amelie Lens - In Silence - Drumcode
12. Marco Bailey - Icefyre - Materia
13. Johannes Heil - Exile 008_03 - Exile
14. Dast - Raid Zone - Off recordings
15. Slam - Vapour - Soma
16. Parallx - Lost in Time - ARTS

DCR355 - Drumcode Radio Live - Amelie Lens live from Complex, Maastricht

Arturo Fuentes - string quartets
Quatuor Diotima
2017 production by KAIROS
https://www.kairos-music.com/cds/0015015kai

Diotima

Liquid crystals - Arturo Fuentes - Quatuor Diotima (excerpt)

Amelie Lens @ Awakenings Festival 2017 (24-06-2017)

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Website: www.awakeningsfestival.nl

Amelie Lens @ Awakenings Festival 2017 (24-06-2017)

SHIFTING MIRRORS (ESPEJOS MUTANTES, ESPELHOS MUTANTES)
For alto sax and electronics
Shifting Mirrors (2016) is a multi-track electronic piece using exclusively fragments of sampled saxophone sounds, which were worked out with various digital techniques. The composition was realized in CCMAS-Morelia Studios, Mexico, thanks to a residence program supported by Ibermúsicas Foundation.
There is not a conventional score here, but a digital audio file containing 32 channels showing separate waveforms. This document was realized directly with a sound edition application. In the case of a version with a live saxophone, this digital document serves as a guide for the instrumentalist, who must follow it strictly and adapt his intervention to the composed sound structures.
The reason behind this unusual procedure is to develop a musical situation where the work becomes a possible example of a “participative performance”, according to the expression of the interpreter to whom the mixed piece is dedicated, saxophonist Pedro Bittencourt.

The title of the piece comes from the idea that sustains it: the electronic part was made exclusively from saxophone sounds (in general very short), constituting a mirror network that reflects and answers in time and space. This network is structured in a way that rhythmic and space relationships won’t be heard as a mechanism of delay, but as a “prismatic” elaboration, carefully composed. The instrumentalist must go inside this composed network and follow its development. One of the required actions, throughout the assimilation phase of the piece, consists in listening to the separate 32 channels, to be aware of sounds involved, and choose the ones he wishes to reproduce as a “mirror”. The electronic part, determined in detail, can enrich itself with shifting mirrors from the live part.
Each sound file inscribed in the digital support has a name, sometimes indicating the instrumental cause: the playing modes on the saxophone (i.g.: coppio di lingua, coppio di lingua quasi slap, fluted, harmonics, multiphonics, etc.), at other times indicating more complex sounds being part of the composition (these files constituting more radical transformations of the instrumental sound realized with digital techniques as granulation, convolution, phase-vocoding).
Indications of how to play a given object having a clear instrumental causality are considered as priorities for the instrumentalist. The indications that doest not have clear instrumental causality are optional – they can however be parts of the instrumentalist’s reading trajectory, who can “jump” from one line to another (this being one of the “degrees of freedom” which he can use, but always respecting the metric and sonic features inscribed in the digital support.
New specific trajectories can be signalized (notated) by the instrumentalist, adding new signs (lines, arrows, words) to the support, and eventually indications of pitch; duration and dynamics; these additions can act as memory cues. However, the parameters must always to refer closely to the sound of the electronic part. The pitches, for example, have always to be tuned with the ones that are already fixed in the digital support, and in no case different ones can be added (because there is an explicit harmonic plan stated in the piece). The same occurs with durations, metrics and intensities: the interpreter must follow without exceptions what is sounding in the digital support – the interpretation must be precise in all these aspects.

Shifting Mirrors (2016) for alto sax and electronic sounds - exerpt (3 first minutes)

Erika Vega, Four darks in red (2018) for trombone, percussion and contrabass
Commissioned by Festival Vértice UNAM
Premiered by ELISION ensemble 

Live recording, Festival Vértice, 27 October 2018, Mexico City.

Four Darks In Red (2018) for trombone, percussion and contrabass

Arturo Fuentes 
Carlotas Zimmer – Monodrama einer vergessenen Kaiserin
Musiktheater für Sopran und Ensemble (2018) 60’

Arturo Fuentes - Komposition, Textauswahl, Regie, Bühne, Video
Klangforum Wien
Johannes Kalitzke - Leitung
Sarah Maria Sun - Sopran

Texte aus Fernando del Paso - Noticias del Imperio (Nachrichten aus dem
Imperium)

PREMIERE 8, 9 Sept. 2018
Klangspuren Festival
Silbersaal im SZentrum, Schwaz, Austria

Kompositionsauftrag KLANGSPUREN SCHWAZ mit Förderung durch Secretaría de
Cultura, FONCA-SNCA, Mexiko In Kooperation mit Festival Internacional de Chihuahua

Video produced by LondonHall Editions and Lightness Theater Innsbruck (LITH)
Camera: Lino Lanzmaier, Tobias Lanzmaier and Lanzmaier
Sound recording by ORF Tirol

Carlotas Zimmer (Sarah Maria Sun, Klangforum Wien, excerpt)

EXCERPT

Cello concerto "Von Dunkel zu Dunkel"

Premiere 10. Dezember
Theaterhaus Stuttgart, T1

Maximilian Hornung · Violoncello 
Matthias Foremny · Leitung

Arturo Fuentes
Cellokonzert (UA)
(Kompositionsauftrag des Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, finanziert durch die Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung)

Die Sinfonie der Königin
Maximilian Hornung, der Weltklassecellist aus Augsburg, ist nicht nur mit einem klassischen Konzert Haydns, sondern auch mit einer spannenden Uraufführung zu erleben. Arturo Fuentes, in Österreich lebender Mexikaner, zählt zu den eigenwilligsten Komponisten unserer Zeit. Auch in seinem Cellokonzert ist er auf der „Suche nach einer ätherischen Tonalität“. Dazu kommen ein Werk des in Shanghai geborenen und in Frankreich wirkenden Qigang Chen, der in seiner Musiksprache chinesische Tradition und Folklore mit westlicher Musik in origineller Weise verbindet, und eine wahrhaft „königliche“ Symphonie von Joseph Haydn. Denn Frankreichs unglückliche Königin Marie Antoinette soll diese 1785 in Paris erstmals erklungene Symphonie besonders geliebt haben.

Cello concerto (Maximilian Hornung, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, 2018)

Camilla Townsend, historiadora estadounidense, es la autora del libro Malintzin, una mujer indígena en la Conquista de México. Un cúmulo de antecedentes históricos nahuas nos acercan a una época y a una mujer empeñada en sobrevivir en las condiciones más adversas. Regalada a los conquistadores, esclava, concubina, traductora y consejera de Cortés.

Malintzin, la traductora de la Conquista en busca de su dignidad

Composer Mexico/Austria visit: www.arturofuentes.com

HEAVY (for saxophone soloist, saxophone ensemble and soundtrack, 2015)

Arturo Fuentes

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