This piece belongs to a project entitled "Sinfonía Oblicua": an homage to the Uruguayan poet Julio Herrera y Reissig. The aim of this work, which sets voice, guitar and Tibetan flute in a compositional/improvisational dynamic, was premiered in Montevideo at the “Veladas Beatnick” in November 2010 and was performed live at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC in February 2011. This show was also the presentation of the newly formed trio MES (Marcelo Toledo, Ernesto Estrella, Stelios Michas), which focuses also in the possibilities of a frame that moves between improvisation and composition and has sound search around the poetic text as a base. In this case, it is a selection of Herrera y Reissig's poems what triggers the exploration. 

Tertulia Lunatica (MES trio, live at LPR, NYC)

Sound Map of Hispanic Poetry 

(Ernesto Estrella Cózar / Marcelo Toledo) 


This project plans to develop through sound a fragmentary map of the poetry written in Spanish language throughout diverse time and geographical settings. The poetic and musical research that underlies this map would trace back to the latent states of Spanish language in the Middle Ages, also include the native pre-columbine musical and poetical realm, to then move across the Renaissance and Romanticism and into the most contemporary  revelations of poetry nowadays, both in its textual and its performative emergence. 

The goal of this map is not of a chorological display of poetry and sound, but an exploration of a rich tradition that would make these poems appear and act upon our present as a live tradition that can still today bring forth discoveries and a new sensitivity to both the poetry reader and the music audience.  Each poem, in this sense, will become a field for the exploration and display of a sound idea, this meaning that it will not only be thought on its historical background, but also be crossed diachronically by elements belonging to other poetic worlds. The aim is not that of collage, though. But an intense will to create material for both a performance and studio recording.  All this based on the belief that an enrichness of our senses and a change in the routines of the ear and the eye can occur when we set ourselves to create unexpected elements and share an altered perception of a text familiar to our background. 

The current state of the project includes poems by Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, César Vallejo, Federico García Lorca, Julio Herrera y Reissig and Oliverio Girondo, 



Tertulia Lunatica (MES trio, live at LPR, NYC)

ernescozar

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