stunning contemporary work... and fascinating conceptual process

Composition:
Boris Bezemer

Performance:
Ensemble Resilience
Natalie Kulina (violin)
Marco Danesi (bass clarinet) 
Tomek Szcsepaniak (percussion)
Paolo Gorini (piano, seaboard) @paolo-gorini

Live at:
Club Fluxus, TivoliVredenburg – Utrecht, The Netherlands

More info:
www.borisbezemer.nl/index/under-water

Underwater

performed by Maciej Skrzeczkowski on 21.06.22, Royal Conservatory of the Hague (NL)
mixed & mastered by Lilita Dunska

for blandine & maciej

A conceptual piece for 2 theremin, exploring the sensitivity and fragility inherent in the instrument and its performers through a minimal but deceptively complex score.

Performed by Markus Rogenhofer and Peter Stiegler.
Technical support by Maya Sivak.
Composed in Tallinn, recorded in Graz Winter 2023

Swinging Doors for 2 Theremin (Take 1 & 2)

Chance, Love, and Logic (2024)

Performed by Ordinary Affects
Grand Gallery, RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island
4 August 2024
Morgan Evans-Weiler (Violin), Jordan Dykstra (Viola), Laura Cetilia ('Cello), J. P. A. Falzone (Vibraphone doubling Piano and Electronics)

(c) 2024 J. P. A. Falzone, Multiversal Edition (BMI)

Recording by Laura Cetilia and Jordan Dykstra

Chance, Love, and Logic

2024
piano, flute, clarinet (or bass clarinet), violin (or viola), cello, percussion (1 player).

title: Frédéric Chopin as quoted by Emilie von Gretsch, recorded by Maria von Grewingk (Eine Tochter Alt-Rigas, Schülerin Chopins, 1928): "Concerts are never real music; in them we must give up hearing what is most beautiful in art."

text in percussion part: Franz Liszt and Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein trans. Martha Walker Cook (Life of Chopin, 1852/1863)

note: https://andrewstock.org/chopin/

BlackBox Ensemble, Chicago, January 18, 2025 (dress)
Austin Gray Williams, engineer

“Les concerts ne sont jamais de veritable musique, on doit renoncer a y entendre, ce qu’il y a de beau dans l’art.”

Open Symmetry (2024)

Ensemble for New Music Tallinn, cond. Arash Yazdani
All the instrumental material in this piece is derived from a poem written in 1910 by the Estonian writer Juhan Liiv. Only later did I discover that, at the time of writing, Liiv had already been suffering from schizophrenia for several years—yet he continued to produce some of his most beautiful and profound works, including this luminous text.

I began by analyzing the spectral content of Estonian syllables, extracting rhythms, overtones, and coarticulations. The structure of the work follows this process: from vowel-based overtone chords to verse-derived harmony and rhythm, and finally to melodies shaped by the contours of speech.
By working in this way, I believe the text revealed yet another layer of both lightness and darkness embedded in the language Liiv chose. With a wealth of material generated from this analysis, I sought to shape a form that would be sensitive both to the meaning of the text and to its overtone fabric.
The final section is a multilayered composition of pre-recorded voices—some of which seemed to haunt me during the creation of this work.

Liivi "kood" / Liiv’s “Code”  for ensemble (2025)

Ensemble Modern, cond. Clemens Heil

"I have attempted to create music that is, as it were, self-aware, reflecting upon itself. The ‘sounding personality’ is essentially dual in its character – indirectly alluding to Robert Schumann, the composer of introvert music par excellence, its dreamer self (Eusebius) seeks for an optimal distance of a sight that would allow it to observe its own sensations, colors and shades – in other words, its passionate self (Florestan). “What is the logic therein?” reflects Eusebius, when occasionally settling on that quiet and silent land, from which it stoically observes its own constructive as well as deconstructive forces – its surges and its storms... I have associatively linked the condition for such introspective examination with the image of darkroom – a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of light sensitive materials." JP 2012

(Commissioned within the project "Myths, Nation, Identities" – an initiative by Goethe-Institut and Ensemble Modern)


Darkroom (Ein Fantasiestück für Ensemble, 2012)

pf Explore Ensemble
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Nov 2020, @ BBC Maida Vale

Sentimental drifting music

Tactile Distortion -  Excerpt of raw recording audiovisual live set at Üle Heli festival Tallinn 2019.
Tactile Distortion
Sound - Renzo van Steenbergen
Image - Emer Värk

Liivi "kood" / Liiv’s “Code” for ensemble (2025)

Liisa Hirsch

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