Name: segon quartet de corda (2015) [JACK Quartet] by Joan Arnau Pàmies
Duration: 15 min
Description: JACK Quartet Ari Streisfeld and Christopher Otto, violins John Pickford Richards, viola Kevin McFarland, cello World premiere performance. Series 20/21. Auditorio 400 Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid). November 23rd, 2015.

Piercer

JACK Quartet
Ari Streisfeld and Christopher Otto, violins
John Pickford Richards, viola
Kevin McFarland, cello

World premiere performance. Series 20/21. Auditorio 400 Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid). November 23rd, 2015. 

segon quartet de corda (2015) [JACK Quartet]

Divided in three parts, this piece was intended as a song cycle and sets to music the lines from the witches scene in Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Each movement reflects upon classical forms, departing from compositional strategies that explore loose ways of interpreting the score. Part I resembles Rondo form, Part II is a canon of sorts, and Part III is an study on recomposition that resembles variations.

Performers from Fonema Consort:

Nina Dante, soprano
Emily Beisel, clarinet in Eb
Miranda Cuckson (guest), viola

Performed at National Sawdust, Brooklyn, NYC
April of 2016


"(in)armonia: mythologies" by Pablo Santiago Chin

observation three :: for double string quartet and double bass 

Studio recording with 'zero theorem'

Dedicated to my friend and composer, Neil March

Composer-in-Residence to the Observatory: Two site-specifically inspired string quartets across two residency locations in one year. As a composer and painter I have a deeply held interest in the psychological and perceptual / emotional / intuitive associations between these two media and how ideas can be transacted one to the other. As well as creating two new string quartets I will also keep a video diary of the residency and creative experience, make sketches and paintings [on location] of the built and natural landscape features to explore transduction between the physical environment and sound construction transforming [intuitively] visual ideas into notation – landscape into sound. More here:  http://marc-yeats.co.uk/blog/category/composer-in-residence-to-the-observatory/  

'observation three' is an unforeseen extension to the work undertaken in the composition of the observations quartets as it brings the two quartets colliding together in antiphonal exchanges separated by the double bass who's content borrows from, develops and underpins the two quartets it is flanked by. This collision generates entirely new contextual relationships between the material of the quartets. These new contexts are amplified by the double bass material to generate a dense and energetic new work for strings. 

The subtitle, Salt Hill, refers to a chalk hill I visited whilst walking near Old Winchester Hill in Hampshire as part of my first residency. The title and subtitle act only as a stimulus to the imagination and a way of identifying the piece. The title holds certain resonances of the visit and what was in my mind at the time. Having said that, the music is in no way a programmatic or pastoral depiction of the place; the composer is fully aware that listeners will interpret music in many ways and appreciates that all personal interpretations are valid.  

Asynchronous composition - notes:  
The instrumentalists play independently of each other. Music is cued to begin only with instruments starting at the same time. There is no ‘fixed’ synchronisation between the instrumentalists. Whilst the relationship of each instrument is flexibly placed against its neighbour, care has been taken to calculate potential outcomes of coincidence and variability. To this end it is vital that metronome markings and time code are adhered to as accurately as possible although the composer appreciates that it is the various interpretations and practicalities inherent in the realisation of tempi that contribute to the richly unique nature and interplay of each performance.   

Compositional material is derived from a series of distant variations that unify all sections with thematic landmarks. Thematic material is audible throughout the piece, bringing cohesion and structure to the work. All the instrumental roles are written to a high degree of virtuosity and most contain extended techniques and quarter-tones. The music itself forms dense, highly complex and constantly changing relationships that are frequently wild and sometimes beautiful.   

The score and parts  
I have not produced a score for observation three; difficulties and variables associated with displaying the musical material in vertical alignment as represented in real time are considerable. Each performance will yield somewhat different results, interplays, gestural and harmonic references and outcomes. As a result, the material contained within the piece can only be read via the instrumental parts. Consequently there is no definitive performance of the piece. observation three can only be realised through performance [as opposed to comprehended by reading through a score]; this is the nature of the music - it has to be experienced to be ‘known’.   

circa 15 minutes in duration.    

Marc Yeats -July 2016 

Observation 3 [salt hill] for double string quartet and double bass

The following inscription, written by the composer, appears at the head of the score:

By the start of the revolution in October 1917, workmasters at the House of Fabergé had completed fifty jeweled eggs for the last of the Russian tsars. Forty-three of the eggs survive (auctioned by the Bolsheviks after the revolution) with the others now lost, or the treasure of thieves. Dazzling in ribbons of guilloche, the intricacy of the eggs’ enamelwork gives to these objects their ability to transfix: greens, purples, reds made brilliant in cloisonné. But how to understand the rules of a world that embeds in eggs the wealth of its kings? How slowly must have gone the work at the jewelers’ desks. And how quickly the changes outside.

Fabergé Investigations is a work in progress: only the first six minutes of the score are currently prepared for performance; the duration of the full piece will equal about half an hour.

This performance given by ensemble recherche on 21 May 2016 in Paine Hall on the campus of Harvard University.

Fabergé Investigations [introduction] (2016) for eight players

100 years ago, Russians overthrew the czar and the autocratic regime in the middle of WWI. In a nation comprised primarily of peasants, the working class led a democratic revolution that dramatically raised living standards for millions. Here we talk about this revolution's relevance today.

Part 1: What happened in 1917 in Russia and what can we learn from it today?
Part 2: Why did this break from capitalism happen in Russia? And how was the bureaucracy able to take over under Stalin?

Music selections (in order of appearance)
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 2 in B major, Op. 14, “October”, II. Chorus (1927)
Moscow State Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra
Kiril Kondrashin, conductor

Arseny Avraamov: Simfoniya gudkov ("Symphony of factory sirens”) (1922)

Vincent Youmans: Tea for Two (arranged by Dmitri Shostakovich) (1927)
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Riccardo Chailly, conductor

Dmitri Shostakovich: Suite for Variety Orchestra, VII. Waltz 2 (1956)
Russian State Symphony Orchestra
Dimitry Yablonsky, conductor

To support this podcast, please donate at www.SocialistAlternative.org/donate

Russian Revolution's Relavance Today - Socialism Today #2 - Part 1

Transcendental Strains III(a) for 1-4 instruments and live electronics.

Version for two oboes recorded by the composer 09/01/2018

Transcendental Strains III (2017)

Performed by: The Crossing during their residency at Northwestern University, March 2018.
Image: "The Absent-Minded Deciduous Rainforest Man" by Santiago Evans Canales (https://www.instagram.com/santiago_evanscanales/)
Additional editing and noise removal: Grayson Elliott Taylor

This piece is the second of three 'etudes' for 24 voices which serve as preliminary studies for a larger work in progress. 

Program note:

In Roald Dahl’s short story The Sound Machine, we learn about a device made to hear the inaudible. Its inventor—a young, anxious man who lives in the middle of the woods—does not quite know what he will listen to with his machine. The outcome is something he did not suspect: the machine could capture and make audible to human ears the screams of pain that flowers and trees produce when getting hurt.

With this short story in mind, I started to wonder if there could be some sort of vegetal sonic language besides the many other complex ways in which plants communicate. If there were, then how would this sound to humans? Its linguistic variants: would they be separated by species or rather by geography? Would humans relate differently with plants if there was an aural/linguistic element involved?


"Dialectos de árbol" [Tree Dialects] represents three linguistic variants of one imaginary vegetal language. In each of them (short “discourses” by each plant,) we can hear a bit of the plant´s idiosyncratic differences and its personal—vegetal?—character.

Dialecto de Árbol/Tree Dialect (n.2)  — for 24 voices (2018)

Composed by Joan Arnau Pàmies

Live performance from May 12th, 2018 at Project Q / Innovator Lab.

Produktionsmittel I - Joan Arnau Pàmies

Músic i compositor nascut a Reus el 1988.

segon quartet de corda (2015) [JACK Quartet]

Joan Arnau Pàmies

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