Performers: Ensemble for New Music Tallinn, cond. Arash Yazdani
Recorded at Musicolomouc, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 11.10.2021

"...an infinite series of times, a growing, dizzying web of divergent, convergent and parallel times. That fabric of times that approach one another, fork, are snipped off, or are simply unknown for centuries..." 
J. L. Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths"

The Garden Of Forking Paths (2021) for sextet

Commissioned by and dedicated to Duo Signal.

Baritone saxophone: Alejandro Oliván.
Trombone: Adrián Albaladejo.

Recorded by Santiago Villar (Musician's eye)
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Programme notes:

"Vers l’essence de l’écoute" is a clear example of the aesthetic path I have been following in recent years. I have been taking away many of the complexities and musical density that was inherent to my previous work, in order to look for the essence of what constitutes my musical language.

The compositional process of "Vers l’essence de l’écoute" began with my fascination with the concept of Ma in Japanese Noh theatre. Ma could be very roughly defined as blank space, interval between actions, sounds or words; a pause that has content in it. I soon discarded the idea of Ma as an articulatory element for the piece; nevertheless, the conceptual implications of it are still underlying.   

"Vers l’essence de l’écoute" is symbolically and poetically a process of surrendering to silence, to pause, to void. The first minute and a half of the piece is illustrating this process: both players are required to play a nearly constant sound, either by the use of circular breathing or by finding strategies to make the sound seamless. Music is pushing the players to breathe as little as possible. But, in the end, breathing is going to be needed; pause is therefore inexorable.

That reluctance of accepting pause, void, but in the end needing to surrender to it, is what articulates the dramaturgy of the piece and all its symbolic content.

Vers l'essence de l'écoute (2021) | Baritone saxophone and trombone

Duo Telluur: Heli Ernits (cor anglais), Kirill Ogorodnikov (guitar)
Recorded in Galerii Noorus, Tartu, Estonia in September 2019

How would birdsong sound to us if we were the size of songbirds? And how would the song of a tree unfold in our ears if we lived slow enough to perceive it?

Bird Music For Trees - Duo Telluur version

Transcripción del Preludio nº 2 para piano solo
Violín: Suzy Frinking
Piano: Gustavo Cardinal

Britos - Preludio No. 2 - Violín Y Piano - Frinking & Cardinal

Nuño Fernández Ezquerra (1992) - Vers l’essence de l’écoute (2021)
for baritone saxophone and trombone

Live at Concours Nicati 2023
26.08.2023

Duo Signal 
Alejandro Oliván - baritone saxophone
Adrián Albaladejo Díaz - trombone

https://www.duosignal.net/

Audio recording: Christophe Egea
Audio mix and mastering: Clément Marie

Salquin Konzertsaal, Hochschule Luzern-Musik

Nuño Fernández Ezquerra (1992) - Vers l’essence de l’écoute (2021)

Dorian Gray for trombone and bariton saxophone (2023) - Duo Signal

TWENTY-FOUR HOKKU ON A MODERN THEME
is a cycle of 24 songs for soprano and double bass based on the homonymous literary work by the American poet Amy Lawrence Lowell (1874 - 1925).

It was commissioned by OSIC (Departament de Cultura de Catalunya).
Premiered on 18 October 2023 at the Sala d'Orquestra del Conservatori Superior del Liceu, Barcelona.
Recorded at La Atlántida Estudio, Barcelona.

Lyrics: Amy Lawrence Lowell
Composer: Sergi Puig
Soprano: Karera Fujita
Double bass: Louis Siracusa-Schneider
Sound engineer: Jose González González
Album cover: Marc Oller

NIGHTWATCHERS  by Hanna Hartman
for 2 performers and tape.
Commissioned by Duo Diabas,
Anna Svensdotter and My Hellgren
with the support of Kulturrådet.
Dedicated to Duo Diabas.
Premiére 28 October 2023 at Hallands konstmuseum, Halmstad
as part of INES series.

Nightwatchers

Inspired by some of my favorite licks that Charles Mingus ever wrote, this solo baritone saxophone piece is meant to swing hard. 

Mingus wrote and performed some of the most influential jazz music in our history, and his colossal library of repertoire spans an enormous breadth and depth of emotions. The passion, the rage, the soul, the fiery energy. Mingus was a man possessed. This piece serves to be my own small reflection in tribute to the "Angry Man of Jazz."

Live world premiere performed by the composer herself, Shelley Washington, in November of 2016.

MO'INGUS

Flashback:  6.49 min.; 2016     fixed media, stereo
The piece Flashback plays with different timezones, perceptions and memories that don't quite mirror what really happened in the past.
The use of the voice, musicbox, prepared piano and an analogue synthesizer along with an almost complete absence of effects, emphasizes an attempt to dock onto the past. This makes the memory seem more poetic than it actually was.
....a collection of memories....

Flashback Martina Claussen  // Excerpt

In a double sense, the title is inspired by Don Juan Tenorio, the image of the eternal seducer. According to the philosophy of existentialism, seduction does not aim at carnal fullness but is more understood as an aesthetic gesture, in which precisely the greatest pleasure is to provoke desire.
 
Following this idea, the composer launches hem to the exploration of the rhythmic palette of the baritone saxophone making use of its numerous technical and virtuosistic resources, as well as abrupt changes in characters, percussive effects and interventions of the voice in order to give this work a lyrical and gestural sense that seduces us.

Find out more about the classical/contemporary repertoire for baritone saxophone on the blog from my website: https://joanmf.com/jmf-blog/

DREAMLOVER (2017) for Baritone Saxophone solo. Albena Petrovic-Vratchanska

I premiered more than 60 works of different genres of music by composers such as Joan Bagés Rubí, José Luis Campana and Hans Peter Stubbe Teglbjaerg, among others. Of particular note was the ‘Concerto for baritone saxophone, piano and string orchestra’ by Albena Petrovic-Vratchanska, at the Luxembourg Philharmonie in June 2018. 
My varied music projects, focused mainly on new music, have brought me to perform in Europe, America and Australasia in festivals such as Mixtur Barcelona (2018), New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (USA 2017), Rc4 (Brazil 2015) and Classical:NEXT (Austria 2014 and Germany 2022). 
I have been a member of several chamber music groups such as the saxophone quartet SAX 3+1 (1994-2013) or Sigma woodwind trio (2004-2007). Currently, I collaborate with Morphosis Ensemble and some groups of contemporary music.

DREAMLOVER (2017) for Baritone Saxophone solo. Albena Petrovic-Vratchanska

Joan Martí-Frasquier

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