Richard Worth's 'African Flower' performed by the Edinburgh Quartet

Richard Worth African Flower

Derek Williams's 'Mature Boy' performed by the Edinburgh Quartet

Derek Williams Mature Boy

Harry Whalley's 'gigantesque' performed by the Edinburgh Quartet

Major 3rd modulations, reflected fragments, cadences taken out of context. John Coltrane's famously fast bebop workout is mirrored like a lethargic doppelgänger in this stylistically disparate piece. The composition concentrates on contrasting textures, where overtones and harmonics are expressed in different ways.  Listen out for the gulls descending.

Harry Whalley gigantesque

Kostas Rekleitis's 'It Takes Four' performed by the Edinburgh Quartet

During my undergrad years, also in Edinburgh University, I was privileged to have analysis class and counterpoint workshops with Raymond Monelle to whom this piece is dedicated.

The piece “It Takes Four” for string quartet, is based on four jazz standards themes: “I Mean You”- Thelonious Monk, “Anthropology”- Charlie Parker, ”Solar”- Miles Davies, and ”Autumn leaves”-Joseph Kosma.  The main themes and motifs stand alone with their proper harmonic structure or in polyphonic fashion, combining the four tunes or fragments of them. The piece was written during the hot Athenian summer after a phone call from the organisers, who kindly included me in this concert and I feel privileged to be a part of it. I'd like to thank Ryan Somerville and Nearchos Panos. 

Kostas Rekleitis It Takes Four

Nicola Baroni's 'For Raymond Monelle. Augmented Variations' performed by Nicola Baroni, Hypercello

The live recording of Raymond Monelle, playing the Piano in a pub, is the text of the piece. 
Variations because the 1' 58" recording is looped throughout the work.
Augmented because the ritornellos are highly variable in their speed of reproduction.
Augmented also because different physical spaces of sound and perception co-exist in real time.
Sampling as a granulation from the spectral micro-level toward a commented reality.
Nothing here is written.  Everything is composed live.
Sounds of the piano and chatting people.
Where are the filters?
Chamber music.
The Cello plays itself, while re-composing the sample in real time.
Hypercello is not a new prototype: it is a Cello.
It augments performance toward the space of composition.
Sound and Gesture Physical Computing captures and analyzes the live cello performance.
These data are parameters of the digital structures, zooming into Monelle's recorded sound.

 
“Our sense of reason is gratified by the reduction of chaos to order, but our apprehension of the real is more at home in a world of particularities”.
“The real life which is reflected by the eloquent artwork is not an external feature…. it is itself a system of signs, a textual feature”.
 Raymond Monelle, from Musical uniqueness as a function of the text.

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