Youtube video of the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUf5Ca6_wk0

commissioned by Ensemble Proton Bern as a part of Protonwerk No. 13

live recording of premiere 23. April 2024 - Dampfzentrale Bern

Ensemble Proton Bern 

Conductor- Gregory Charette
Alto flute, piccolo - Bettina Berger 
Oboe - Martin Bliggenstorfer 
Basset horn, contrabass clarinet - Richard Elliot Haynes
Bassoon, Contrabassoon - Elise Jacoberger 
Harp - Vera Schnider 
Piano - Coco Schwarz
Violin - Maximilian Haft 
Cello - Jan-Filip Ťupa

Recording and mixing - Joël Cormier

Program note: 
“Stained light” is a part of an ongoing attempt in my work to uncover sensations and emotions from my own childhood. It can be both nostalgic and dark, as I try to remember how sensitive I felt to everything as a child – to the weather, to the energy of people around me, to the sounds of the world. In the piece, I try to create fragile spaces in which small details can affect the whole system, uncovering layers of sweetness or of darkness. There is something always under the surface, like a hidden song, half-remembered, heard from a distance.

Stained light | for ensemble proton bern (2023-24)

contact: isaac.blumfield@gmail.com

Isaac Roth Blumfield is a composer from Saint Paul, Minnesota, currently based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He writes experimental music for acoustic and electronic instruments which explores resonance, materiality, and memory through expanded sonic approaches towards instruments and objects. His music looks for the strange spaces between subjective and unconscious experience, exploring uncanny places between beauty, pain, and strangeness.
His music has been influenced through  through work with performers such as ensemble sonic space basel alumni, Schallfeld Ensemble, violinists Austin Wulliman and Chris Otto, line upon line percussion trio, Ensemble Modern, Barcelona Modern Ensemble, guitarist Francesco Palmieri and Jamie Monck, and Quartetto Maurice at programs such as the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, the Banff Centre for Creativity, Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, New Music on the Point, Valencia International Performance Academy, Ticino Musica Festival and Freie Universität Berlin im Sommer.  
His music has been broadcast on Swiss Public Radio and supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Fondation Nicati - De Luze, and the Hirschmann Stiftung. He graduated with his Bachelor's degree in composition at New England Conservatory in Boston and a Master's degree in composition at the Hochschule für Musik FHNW in Basel, Switzerland and is currently pursuing post graduate studies at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna. His primary teachers have included Stratis Minakakis, Timothy McCormack, Caspar Johannes Walter, Svetlana Maras, and Clara Iannotta. He is currently a PhD candidate at Harvard University, studying with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku.