Klangforum Wien
Bas Wiegers, conductor

LIVE recording
June 29, 2022 (8pm concert)
Konzerthaus Wien

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Unfeeling was written in response to a commission for an homage to Gustav Mahler. It is an inward-looking meditation on withdrawal and isolation, deeply indebted to his spirit.

References to Mahlerian sonorities abound, in a deliberately restrained, sparsely-orchestrated, Fin-de-Siècle atmosphere. A long melody, led by the English Horn, slowly coalesces, smeared with heterphonic doublings and intercut by an insistent harmonium and static noises. Once-vivid sounds are deprived of their vitality, muffled by a wide variety of mutes, providing a strained and distant counterpoint.

The music reaches for those transcendent moments — the coda of Ich bin der Welt Abhanden Gekommen, the last bars of Lieder Eines fahrenden Gesellen, the ending of Das Lied von der Erde — but that kind of climax remains elusive. We are grounded in the 􏰂at and muddled territory of rumination, unable to muster the strength to break through.

After a while, a second voice emerges: raspy, guttural, full of stutters and slides — a mutually incomprehensible language that fails to communicate or redirect the 􏰂ow.

Unfeeling was commissioned by Klangforum Wien and premiered on December 3m 2021 at the Konzerthaus in Vienna with Bas Wiegers conducting.

Unfeeling

New Ec0-existence is an electroacoustic composition for stereo or multi-channel arrays. This piece was composed and recorded at Laboratory for Immersive Arts & Technology (LIATe), the Hong Kong Baptist University and his home studio, where I sculpted noise to explore spectromorphological approaches in acousmatic music. New Ec0-existence was developed through recording sound samples, analysing recorded sound samples, and organizing and processing the samples. The 500 samples recorded feature air sounds along with non musical instruments and traditional musical instruments. One of the sounds is releasing air from balloons which produces a sustained tone in high register. All the sound recorded is then layered, timestretched, modulated to orchestrate a realistic simulation of space in nature. The piece produces a 3D space with ambisonics environment to mimic nature sound, and aims to raise awareness of the ecological crisis we are facing through the use of electronics music.

The work is selected for the 2023/24 MA/IN Festival in Rome at the Goethe Institut.

New Ec0 - Existence BINAURAL

Spontaneous improvisation on the organ featured in Zhanna Kadyrova's artwork "Russian Contemporary Baroque" at Palazzo Contarini Polignac in Venice (Italy).

June 20th, 2024. Performed by Matthias Krüger.

Recording by Ferdinand Grätz, mix by Matthias Krüger.

Organ Improvisation at Palazzo Contarini Polignac (Venice)

New Orleans -> Harvard -> London -> Paris -> Istanbul -> New York City -> Rome -> Los Angeles -> Palermo

Unfeeling

Christopher Trapani

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