wonderful piece of music.....  and very artistic playing!

First audition - World premiere - September, 24th 2009, in Tobias Barreto Theater - Aracajú, Sergipe, Brazil
Orquestra Sinfônica de Sergipe
Guilherme Mannis, conductor
Karin Fernandes, piano

Edson Zampronha - Concerto n.1 para piano e orquestra - World Premiere

Performed by Barbara Pritchard
Premiered on "Fantastic" by Musikon Concerts
Recorded by Bob Bauer

"houndstooth", a black and white duotone pattern that is characterized by its abstract four-pointed shapes, originated in Scotland as an outer garment for shepherds in the 19th Century. By the 1930s, however, it had morphed into a symbol of wealth by the upper class (particularly the British monarchy) and was adopted into use by prominent fashion designers of the day. By the 1960s, Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel all contributed to bringing the pattern to women’s wear, and it became a distinctive pattern for a generation of women in the workplace. 
 
Using the houndstooth pattern as inspiration, this solo work explores the concept, using the pattern as a starting point for harmonic material, and by considering the characteristics of houndstooth as guiding the tone of the piece - luxurious, bold, clear, and organized.  In addition, there is a visual element - yards of houndstooth fabric on the floor of the stage. 

"houndstooth" is the second in a set of a multiple-work piece based on the history and associations of various textiles/patterns. In each of these works, the textile or pattern is used both as inspiration (history, tone, physical characteristics) and as a physically present element, either visually or sonically. 

"houndstooth" was written for and dedicated to Barbara Pritchard. 


houndstooth by Monica Pearce (Barbara Pritchard, piano)

Instrumentation: flute, clarinet in A, percussion, violin, viola, cello.

Live recording by Ensemble Mdi with Davide Ianni (conductor), July 2016 in Riety, Italy.

Score purchase: https://www.babelscores.com/catalogs/instrumental/5417-april-story

The piece reflects a poem I composed in April, 2016:

April shines,
Brighter than the sunlight on snow.
You run to me,
Once, and twice...
Cross the daytime traffic,
And cross the iron buildings.
Like the flower from gunpoint,
You pierce my chest.

During the piece, I alternate two kinds of musical gesture settings in contrast. One of them reaches a wider range and thus is seemingly more active, and the other is steadier in register. On the other hand, formally, the two gestures are both rendered either by long phrases or by fragments (or shorter/incomplete phrases). This kind of arrangement provides another contrast in which the fragments – or the shorter phrases - are always breaking the longer phrases either by replacing them or interweaving into them. These two kinds of contrast generate energy and then also drive the music towards the final spoken part in the coda section. In the poem, the character (i.e. the poet) sees and/or feels someone running to him, again and again, finally when she arrives, she “hits his chest”. The total structure of the music tries to catch the emotional process and then interpret it by sound. The piece – both the poem and the music versions – ends on the phrase “hit my chest”, as the final dramatic result of the “April Story”.

Cover picture © Wong Kar-wai.

April Story 四月 (2016) for six musicians

Studio recording by Yi Cheng, March 2017 in Boston, US.

Socre purchase: https://www.babelscores.com/catalogs/instrumental/5418-in-somnia5418

I wrote this piece as a personal gift for a friend in Berlin. It was a period I got insomnia. I used most of the night times composing this piece. There are a lot of notes in the middle sections. To actually write so many notes on paper is a very time-consuming job. Finally, I found myself being able to sleep while drawing note-heads…

(in)somnia （無）眠 (2015) for cello solo

Live recording at Sala São Paulo, November/2014.
Karin Fernandes, piano
Wagner Polistchuck, conductor
OSUSP

Radamés Gnattali - Fantasia nº1 para piano e orquestra

Bernard Parmegiani’s 'De Natura Sonorum' is a monolithic twelve-movement work of electronic music, premiered in 1975. In this arrangement for sextet of the second movement, Accidents/Harmoniques, I have set myself the impossible task of distilling the infinite world of electronic sound into something reproducible by acoustic instruments. Such a process can hold a lens to the parent work to see it in a new way, be a means to discover new techniques and sounds in instrumental composition, and opens questions of reducibility: What are the essential features of a work? To what extent can we say that such a reproduction is ‘the same’ or of the same category of its source material?

Commissioned and premiered by Standing Wave, 18 January 2018, Vancouver Symphony New Music Festival, The Orpheum.

Recording by Brian Chan

A video demonstrating the process is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpaTl-4MOw

Accidents / Harmoniques (Bernard Parmegiani transcription) - Standing Wave

From Scratch (2017) classical guitar and eletronics

Live recording by Quatuor Béla, March 2018 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Score purchase: https://www.babelscores.com/catalogs/instrumental/chamber-group/5421-immobilised-motions5421

I wrote the majority of Immobilised Motions when travelling in Peru in December 2017. The pitch material of this piece is related to an earlier string quartet I wrote in 2011. In this piece, I aim to create a paradox between mobility and immobility.

The form of the piece has been planned as a rigid ABCA’. By immobilising the structure in that way, the music, despite its relentless motions, becomes immobile and discrete from a perceptional view. The overall result maintains interest through the contrast between its vigorous surface and vapid essence, and reminds me of a common social problem, mainly happening in human speech. I believe almost everyone would have this kind of experience from politicians, business people, professors, artists, or any other person that, when is talking endlessly and is using various ways to talk, and yet they are really saying nothing of substance. On one hand, this piece is a showcase of a skilful writing, and is sonically full of motions. On the other hand, it is also a showcase essentially to drive the listeners to nowhere and to stay immobilised.

Cover picture © Tona Wilson.

Immobilised Motions 似動 (2017-18) string quartet no. 2

Avez Vous Trouvé Ce Que Vous Cherchiez?- for Ensemble
Premiered by Divertimento Ensemble.
Conductor: Sandro Gorli
July 14th, 2018
Bobbio, Italy.
_______________________________________________________________________
https://www.babelscores.com/catalogs/instrumental/5508-avez-vous-trouve-ce-que-vous-cherchiez

Avez Vous Trouvé Ce Que Vous Cherchiez?- for Ensemble

Writing a work for a tour puts into perspective an essential and fascinating problematic of written music: abstract musical principles are distilled into specific individual sound-events created in specific spaces by specific musicians. Rather than write music that neutralizes these circumstances, I have attempted to ‘tune’ a work to the particularities of the various concert spaces where the work will be realized, and the specific instruments and instrumentalists that will realize it.  

I have researched the acoustics of the concert halls of the tour to generate musical material that will respond to their resonant frequencies. The form of the work mirrors the trajectory of the tour, structured as a sequence of spaces demarcated by an orchestration of the acoustic response of each hall. Features specific to Chloé Dominguez’ cello have guided the materials of the work as well, treating the cello as an interior space-within-a-space. Finally, field recordings from the larger environments around the work’s performance sites are a further source material.  

The work’s title emblematizes the problematic relationship between the abstract and the particular with the homographic word pairing ‘close’ and ‘close’. The two words are written the same but could mean either the adjective ‘close’ (near to) or the verb ‘close’ (to shut or bring to an end). The work hopes to examine the tension between these related ideas: first, the intimacy of the solo instrument and the sensation of being familiar with one’s environment. Second, the idea of ‘enclosure’ (the cello and the concert hall as enclosed spaces) and claustrophobia. 

Close / Close was commissioned by l’Ensemble contemporain de Montréal  with support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Recording: 11 November 2018, The Music Gallery, Toronto. Recording engineer: Paul Hodge

Edson Zampronha - Concerto n.1 para piano e orquestra - World Premiere

Karin Fernandes

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