schemes that offer us a sense of futurity (2021) - for amplified soprano voice, flute, clarinet, violin, and electronics

TAK Ensemble: Charlotte Mundy, voice; Laura Cocks, flutes; Madison Greenstone, clarinets; Marina Kifferstein, violin
Recorded at Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYC, April 25, 2021
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more info + HQ audio here: juliozuniga.info/works/schemes_that_offer_us_a_sense_of_futurity.html

photo credit Emiliano Zúñiga

schemes that offer us a sense of futurity

Hello, I am a composer working with acoustic instruments, analog and digital electronics, and field recordings, as well as an educator and a freelance sound designer and live audio engineer based in Berlin.

In my compositional work, I explore the idea of sound as an acoustic phenomenon that, as artistic material, offers the unique characteristic of being fundamentally spectral: although sound is emitted by vibrating entities in physical space, the absence of a bodily materiality by the time it is perceived by the listener lends itself to an experience determined by what is not physically and tangibly present. With this as a point of departure, I have been building a musical language that is defined by a narrative around what is not actually there, an aesthetics of absence and the illusion of presence, an aural phantasmagoria of sorts.

In May 2023 I received my Ph.D. in music composition from Harvard University, where I studied with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku. I also have a Bachelor of Music degree in composition from McGill University, and a masters degree in composition and electronic music from the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden, where I studied with Mark Andre and Franz Martin Olbrisch. I am currently employed as Lecturer in New Media and Digital Technologies for Music at the Hybrid Music Lab of the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden.

schemes that offer us a sense of futurity

Julio Zúñiga