Written for the Royal Academy of Music  '200 Pieces' bicentennial project
Hugo Mak, bassoon

Tilt (2021) for bassoon

This piece was written for amplified voice and orchestra and is performed by the RSO Wien.

Mouthpiece IX part1

A track from our CD "Exposure": one of three of Joanna Bailie's "Artificial Environments" recorded for the project.

Bailie - Harmonizing (Artificial Environment No.7) - William Tell

Programme Note:

This piece was composed after meetings and a workshop with Open Union. The duo wanted to explore their combined sound and I enjoy creating a situation for listening and embracing the unexpected within a set or concert. As a piece, the concept is simple, but it is also meant to be part of an ongoing development in the duo's sound and awareness when improvising or performing open scores.

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Performed by Open Union
Modular Synth: Peter Bell
Electric Guitar: Patrick Ellis

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Bio:

Christine Cornwell is a performer/composer and producer based in Rotterdam with strong links to free improvisation, collective practice, and strives to initiate projects for artists from different disciplines to work together. In her work, she works closely with performers and audience, recently at Screen Dive/Gaudeamus in Utrecht, workshops with Hackers&Designers + Questions Collective in Amsterdam, and a new series Sounding Here at Rotterdam's Batavierhuis. 

Christine has a Masters in Classical Composition from Codarts University of the Arts, and a Bachelor in Music Performance (violin) from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. She currently mentors students at Codarts University of the Arts and is employed as a Creative Producer there.

More info on Christine here: https://christinecornwell.info

Christine Cornwell - Warm Ups (2022)

Program Notes:

We all inhabit familiar spaces. The most familiar of places, those that we feel most attached to and contained by, are fertile grounds for the unexpected.

In massive, cookie cutter style apartment complexes of the mid-20th and 21st centuries, we see individuals decorating identical spaces in myriad ways, expressing culture, tastes, and trends. If you enter different units in the same building, you have a feeling of a familiar space – a space which might appear different in the most superficial of ways, but at its core, is simply a replica of a space. How we interact with these familiar spaces is determined by the relationships that we have formed with our own space. We explore different spaces in a similar way, imbuing these spaces with simultaneous meaning and purpose.

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Performed by Open Union
Modular Synth: Peter Bell
Electric Guitar: Patrick Ellis

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Bio:

Paolo Griffin is a composer based in Toronto, Canada, whose music explores focused/unfocussed listening, repetition, generative composition, and microtonality, while maintaining a focus on close collaboration and creative spontaneity with the performers he works with.

Paolo is the Artistic and Executive Director of Freesound, a Toronto-based collective that consists of a core group of the city's most adventurous young musicians and interpreters of contemporary music. Freesound present concerts throughout the year with an interest in the work of emerging composers.

A fierce advocate of accessible arts and inclusive practices, Paolo is also the Managing Director of Xenia Concerts, a Toronto-based charity that focuses on presenting accessible concerts and musical events for autism and neurodiverse communities. Through his work with Xenia, Paolo has helped to shape such programs as Sound.colLAB - a collaborative project in which seven neurodivergent artists have co-created an original piece of music under the mentorship of
professional musicians.

2022-23 engagements include lectures at the Sibelius Academy in Finland, and the Tuckamore Chamber Music Festival's Widening the Circle initiative where he appeared as a mentor composer. Other events include premieres with the Continuum Ensemble, with saxophonist
David Zucchi in Toronto, and at the Aurore Renaissance Music Festival in Helsinki. Paolo's music has been featured in at festivals across Canada, including Ottawa Chamberfest, Toronto Summer Music, and Big Lake Arts Festival. His music can be heard in concert and on the radio
by performers and ensembles such as Continuum Ensemble (CA), Residentie Orkest (NL), The New European Ensemble (NL), Avanti! Chamber Music (FI), Thin Edge New Music Collective(CA), Duo Holz (CA), Freesound (CA), and more.

Paolo holds degrees from the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague where he studied with Peter Adriaansz and Martijn Padding. Other teachers have included Linda
Catlin Smith, Anthony Tan, Juhani Nuorvala, Chaya Czernowin, Mayke Nas, Matthew Whittall, Jukka Tiensuu, Rodney Sharman, Gary Kulesha, Nobert Palej, Huba de Graaff, Jan van de Putte,
Ana Sokolovic, Peter Ablinger, Christopher Theofanidis, Mario Garuti, Dmitri Tomozco, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Chen Yi.

Paolo's sits on the board of Musicworks Magazine. His work and research is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canadian New Music Network.

Paolo Griffin - Familiar Spaces (2022)

From the cycle: "Kilpisjärvi Sessions"

@Collettivo_21 :
Eleonora Liuzzi / Alessandro Mazzacane / Daniele Nava / Lorenzo Moretto / Lorenzo Di Marco / Luca Guidarini

Recorded 6th of August 2023 at Casa Della Musica San Michele, Montaldeo / Foresty Festival
Mix: Alessandro Perini
Master: Luca Guidarini

www.collettivo21.com
www.alessandroperini.com

Ornithology I. Chronicles of the ground (Collettivo 21), 2023

this piece is a study of ableton's warp function, using a 27-second sample of the opening chords of debussy's prelude canope. by stretching the sample at different levels, strange and unpredictable glitches are made audible, pulling us into a microcosm inside the instrument, opening up the wood and swallowing us whole. in this soundworld, time becomes a texture; texture becomes a rhythm. a piano dies and is reborn.

debussy_rework_iii

Saar Berger, HfM Trossingen Windhoek Festival, March 2024

Glass Echoes (rev. 2024) for horn

three rooms for chamber ensemble

room one
   -first wall
room two
   -second wall
room three (stuff, nonsense and all that jazz)
   -final wall

performed by the Freesound Ensemble June 2024
Tristan Durie, flutes
Anthony Thompson, clarinets
Aysel Taghi-Zada, violin
Matt Antal, viola,
Amahl Arulanandam, cello
Wesley Shen, piano
Kelly Lin, conductor

Firstly, I am not a composer. So, this piece is not coming as a step along some compositional or aesthetic development or voice, or from any sort of until now hidden compositional practice. It is rather a mostly new and singular experiment in trying to concretise, expand, and put down into notation the little sound games that run through my head (games I think many musicians play as well). This was done thanks to the very positive (and maybe a bit too optimistic) motivation of Paolo Griffin when I was joking about writing a piece to go along with Vortex Temporum, and much help from Ofer Pelz who helped guide me through the writing process.

I say piece, but this was mostly developed as disparate ideas that I found funny, that I turned into a number of independent miniatures, and that hopefully sound somewhat cohesive together (or maybe thankfully not). They mostly are made up of textural ideas that could continue on forever, or single sound objects that I wanted to repeat on end in only slightly different ways, possibly ad nauseum. I find a very enjoyable humour in the quiet little sparkles, the musical mumbling nonsense and the sad, pitiful little sounds, and the slightly obsessive approach to them. One will probably notice some clear inspiration and influence (or less generously, stealing) from composers I enjoy such as Berio, Donatoni and Sciarrino.

I was reluctant to give this piece a name as I did not have any particular inspiration or desire to enforce a particular image on the sounds. The only word that potentially acted as inspiration was ‘derpy’. Under pressure to give it one, I am happy with what it ended up being called. There is something fitting for me of ‘rooms’, especially an empty room, as both defined by the physical boundaries of walls as well as the space/emptiness/nothingness contained within. I like the idea of considering what could be in a room we see as empty; items, objects and sounds that we assume into the room and that become features of its emptiness/nothingness, versus the stuff that stands out as filling it. 

There is also something funny of the image of someone entering an empty room of an art gallery – perhaps by mistake –  and observing it and all the details of its blank walls with the same intent and intensity as the rest of the art.

three rooms

Recording from Berlin Konzerthaus 31.08.2016

Performed by Orchestra of Estonian Academy of Music and Theater, conducted by Paul Mägi.

Based on a single shape, the piece consists of two different natural harmonic rows ( first part following the natural harmonics available on cello strings and second part being a combination of harmonics of other string instruments). Every natural string harmonic has its unique character, depending on the string it is produced on. Touching the string lightly can produce icy high tones or warm, flute like, lower resonances. It is an attempt to bring out the poetry of the microtonal landscape of these particular rows and observe the constant change of tone combinations that mostly occur only once. Other instruments extend the harmonies and give breathe to the structure. To add immediacy, some freedom to make intuitive choices is given to the musicians. While studying the material, I had a picture stuck in my mind as making one of the gigantic wind driven and self moving sculptures of the dutch artist Theo Jansen, hoping that if I get the calculations right, the piece will also catch a wind and reveal something in the sound, that I was unaware of.

Mechanics Of Flying (2016)

Composition: 
Boris Bezemer

Performance:
Nieuw Ensemble @nieuw-ensemble
Ryan Bancroft (conductor)

Live at:
Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ – Amsterdam, The Netherlands

More info:
www.borisbezemer.nl/index/a-puppet-opera

A Puppet Opera

Boris Bezemer

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