Written for the 2024 Black House Collective New Music Workshop. Performance by Charles-Eric Fontaine and the Black House Collective Workshop Ensemble.

Text:
Ovid’s Metamorphoses (15:176-185)
'Et quoniam magno feror aequore plenaque ventis vela dedi: nihil est toto, quod perstet, in orbe. cuncta fluunt, omnisque vagans formatur imago; ipsa quoque adsiduo labuntur tempora motu,
non secus ac flumen; neque enim consistere flumen nec levis hora potest: sed ut unda inpellitur unda urgeturque prior veniente urgetque priorem, tempora sic fugiunt pariter pariterque sequuntur
et nova sunt semper; nam quod fuit ante, relictum est, fitque, quod haut fuerat, momentaque cuncta novantur.

Translation by Frank Justus Miller:
And since I am embarked on the boundless sea and have spread my full sails to the winds, there is nothing in all the world that keeps its form. All things are in a state of flux, and everything is brought into being with a changing nature. Time itself flows on in constant motion, just like a river. For neither the river nor the swift hour can stop its course; but, as wave is pushed on by wave, and as each wave as it comes is both pressed on and itself presses the wave in front, so time both flees and follows and is ever new. For that which once existed is no more, and that which was not has come to be; and so the whole round of motion is gone through again.


Ensemble:
Conductor: Charles-Eric Fontaine
Flute: Elva Tang
Oboes: Victoria Lee, Anne Pinkerton
Bb Clarinet: Emily Mehigh
Harp: Melissa Achten Klausner
Piano: Andrew Anderson
Percussion: Albert Lau, Matt LeVeque
Horns: Caleb Durant, Patrick Williams
Trumpet: Kimmie Sabio
Bass Trombone: Mason Moy
Tuba: Neha Kudva
Violins - Myra Henrichs, Emelyn Bashour, Elicia Neo
Violas: Celka Ojakangas, Emma Antonides
Contrabass - Sam Zagnit

Choir:
Hannah Rice
Andrea Church
Lydia Brown
Ann Chen
Yan Cui
Alondra Santos
Kaitlyn Son
Maura Tuffy



https://www.carlosbandera.com/

as wave impels wave (2024) for 8 voices and 19 instruments

Konstantinos Baras, a Greek composer with a passion for complex and saturated sound, embarked on his musical journey following a diagnosis of HanDL syndrome at the age of 18. Baras is recognized for creating works that convey intense emotions and delve into the complexities of trauma, employing visceral, chaotic sounds marked by a continuous energy flow and aggressive gestures. 

Utilizing digital signal processing, noise, distortion and live interactivity, Baras extends the timbral profile of traditional instruments and seamlessly blends disjunct materials into unified structures. With interest in site-specificity and interdisciplinary collaboration, he works often with dancers and movement artists and engages creatively with space, lights, and visual effects. 

His continued entanglement with black metal and techno contributes to an arrestingly distinctive sound palette, exploring the potential of repetition and bodily mechanics to intensify a sound’s impact on the listener. Toward that aim, Baras organizes his compositions through various processes of iteration and fragmented circularity, manipulating duration and density, often utilizing repetitive material but subtly altering it with every reappearance. The end result is driving, gripping, and grave.

His music has been performed and commissioned by Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain Moscow Contemporary Ensemble (MCME), Vertixe Sonora Ensemble,Ensemble Multilaterale, among other, with performances in festivals and conferences such as, IRCAM ManiFeste, MIXTUR, Darmstadt, reMusik, ilSuono, Ticino Musica, among others.

Currently pursuing a PhD in Composition at Northwestern University, Baras holds Masters degree from Boston University, and Bachelors degree Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Noah Jenkins is a composer and violinist/violist from Oregon, now living in Chicago. His music is inspired by tuning, field recordings, synthesizers, acoustic phenomena, and experiences of deep sound in deep time.

In 2022 Wild Up premiered Spirits Hover as part of the LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight festival. In 2023 Jenkins developed and premiered After Life (a 40-minute piece with original text for vocalist and ensemble) in Chicago with Après L’Histoire. In 2024 he released Without Persistent Environments (Sawyer Editions), an album of two electroacoustic trombone pieces recorded by Chicago trombonist and composer Riley Leitch. Peter Margasak (Bandcamp) praised the music’s “sustained lines awash in luxurious overtones” and its “focus on the dynamic interaction of sound drifting into eternity.”

In 2025 John Adams will conduct the LA Phil New Music Group in the premiere of Not a dream sound, but a sound which sleeping we had really heard, a work for string orchestra, keyboards, and antiphonal percussion, and ~Nois saxophone quartet and Varo String Quartet will premiere Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry in Chicago.

as wave impels wave (2024) for 8 voices and 19 instruments

Carlos Bandera