My piece 'No fear' was premiered in a concert on June the 30th in Santiago de Compostela as a result of the beautiful work between Atlas Ensemble and Vertixe Sonora Ensemble in Son[UT]opías Campusculturae.
It was really special for me taking part in this event and learn so much of all of you. Thank you very much!!

Naomi Sato (Sho)
Avelino Ferreira (Oboe)
Xocas Meijide (Bass Clarinet in Bb)
Bassem Alkhouri (Qanun)
Lan Weiwei (Pipa)
Jorge Montes (Violin)
Diego Ventoso, José Vicente Faus (Percussion)
Artyom Kim (conductor)

_____________________________________

‘No fear’

(…)

that you close my eyes before fear,
that I close yours
and may the eyelids close 
a dark curtain over the void.


EPITAPH

I stopped fearing:
Imagine
what I now have
and live
as if you could not have imagined it.

(Olga Bernad)


When I knew this Olga Bernad’s poem I felt very identificated with the emotion it express, maybe my own personal growing allows me to go increasingly away from that fear to be who one is. 
Then I knew I wanted this piece to collect that feeling of internal fight, of need to escape. Parts that get into conflict and the happines we get when we have learned to overcome it.
A new state of mind, a new energy, a new place.

'No Fear' (June 2013  Son[UT]opías, Santiago de Compostela)

Behind the fractured, percussive lines played by the bass flute in Sur les debris, lay the remains of the shattered recording of a reading of a poem by Arthur Rimbaud. The recording is barely perceivable, the source never recognizable. However the shattered recording is essential in the understanding of the piece, as it served the role of a seed from which the rhythmic and timbral materials germinated. The resulting music is brittle and discontinuous: surfaces that lie at the border between rhythm and texture, splintered pedals that are sparked and interrupted by violent gestures, silences and pauses that disrupt the linearity of the piece.

Sur les debris is dedicated to Shanna Gutierrez, with whom I worked with many hours, gathering materials, testing musical passages, exchanging ideas, making music.

Sur Les Debris

Written for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in May 2022, the work draws its inspiration from two sources: 
‘croquis’ refers to the synesthesia drawings presented to me by the BCMG and that guided my whole approach, and ‘strideurs’ is taken from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud where he, in a synesthetic manner, describes all the vowels in the French alphabet.
Written for the same instrumentation as Iannis Xenakis' "Anaktoria", the piece pays homage to the great Greek composer, for the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Performed at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham
May 29th 2022
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
Melvin Tay, Conductor

Croquis Strideurs (2022), for eight instruments

Performance: 23 February 2004 Paradiso Amsterdam
Atlas Ensemble
Artjom Kim, conductor


Rag Music - Artjom Kim

composed for ManiFeste Academy 2014 (Ircam)
EXAUDI, Ensemble Intercontemporain. Conductor: Julien Leroy
28/06/2014 @ 104 Centquatre, Paris.

Text:  Extracts from "Pornobboy" (2009) by Enrico Castellani & Valeria Raimondi (www.babiloniateatri.it)  

Buonadomenica (2014)

«Mimma’amaqim» (Out of the depths)

Premiere: Stadtcasino Basel – Musiksaal, January 25, 2024
10th Mizmorim Chamber Music Festival Basel
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)
Basler Madrigalisten
Tito Ceccherini, conductor
Recorded by SRF (Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen)

This Psalm is a cry, a call out for help, for being heard by God.
It is often described as a canticle of gradual ascent (Shir Hama’a lot). This ascent could be understood as a rise from the abyss to redemption.
I believe this Psalm could resonate with many, even non-believers, as it shows a universal and tragic part of human life and human nature. That is the experience of grief, depression, abuse, solitude or simply being in a place so dark that leads to despair.
But it also sends a message of light, optimism, and hope, through the conviction that one will be heard.
Even inf it comes from the Hebrew tradition it shows universal values that can be embraced by many cultures and promote tolerance and acceptance. In fact, this psalm forms a regular part of Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and other Protestant liturgies.
In this sense, during the piece the text follows a chronological use and adaptation throughout the Judaism and the different versions of Christianism: Latin: 530, Rule of Saint Benedict; German: Martin Luther Hymns, 1524, al and eventually the English: King James Version from 1610

Miamma'amaqim

The Atlas Ensemble is a place where a number of immensely rich musical cultures meet and create something new, something that transcends and redefines our notions of music today. My piece is an ode to this ensemble, the Atlas project, and the idea of cultural exchange and hybridization. 

Thus the title: Mestizo, a word that is used to describe mixed race, and a defining characteristic of the Latin American culture in which I was raised.

Each of the three texts that are used in the piece is a reflection on a different aspect of cultural exchange. The first, Luz y Mar, which is used in the first half of the piece, describes the moment in which two beautiful natural bodies converge creating unimaginable splendor. The second, Hombre Mestizo, which is used for the second half of the piece, is a short portrayal of a Mestizo man, with unusual physical characteristics and a lost identity. The third text, from which only the first verse is used, is a eulogy to the utopian vision of the Atlas Ensemble, a bilingual dream.

Musically the piece follows the concepts of each of these texts. The setting of Luz y Mar consists of deeply impressionistic passages, in which complex colors are created by the refraction of crystalline musical gestures, always gravitating around the female voice. In Hombre Mestizo, on the other hand, a dark atmosphere is constructed by the obfuscation and juxtaposition of musical references. The female voice goes in and out of the texture only to emerge at the end to question its identity.  The piece vanishes with the short fragment of Sueño Bilingüe, an appropriate synopsis of the beauty of composing for a utopian bilingual project, which will not cease to exist as long as we have the Atlas Ensemble. 

The piece is dedicated to Joël Bons, founder of the Atlas project.


Mestizo voor Soopran en Ensemble Intercultural (2011) - Els Mondelaers and the Atlas Ensemble

Quebranto IV: estratos de tiempo


Quebranto IV (enero 2015), para acordeón solo, supone un punto de inflexión muy especial en mi proceso compositivo, puesto que se trata de la primera pieza en la que he delimitado una estructura unificada entre la microforma y la macroforma que es llevada a la práctica de manera bastante estricta. Así la pieza constituye, en todos los niveles temporales (de ahí el subtítulo), un gesto de deccelerando con crescendo, que va desde el más pequeño motivo hasta la forma global de la obra. Se estructura en tres secciones que poseen contenidos rítmicos y armónicos diferenciados y que evolucionan desde los gestos más agresivos hasta un vaciado progresivo de carácter cada vez más ascético.

La pieza está dedicada a la solista, Nerea Rodríguez Nuñez, quien me la encargó para estrenarla como parte de su propio estudio y reivindicación personal de la relación compositor-intérprete.


Solo Accordion

Nerea Rodríguez

'Quebranto IV: estratos de tiempo' (May 2015)

FRANCO DONATONI Soft per cl. basso (seconda parte) G.Arbonelli (cl. basso)

Performed by the CIKADA Ensemble (Sweden)
Sooo good! Wish to work with them again. 

'Quebranto IV: estratos de tiempo' (May 2015)

Carolina Cerezo Dávila

Related tracks