Improvisation - brass quintet, 2023

Bernhard Plagg - trumpet 1
Stephan Stadtfeld - trumpet 2
Lionel Speciale - horn
Vladimir Vereś - trombone
Fabian Neckermann - tuba

Sound recording in the studio of the Landesmusikakademie Berlin, July 2023
Sound engineer: Benjamin Ostarek

Pastorale - brass quintet

Ripsy Dots for mezzo-soprano, 2023

Jannie Pranger - mezzo-soprano

Sound recording in the studio of the Nederlandse Programma Sichting, Hilversum, Netherlands
Recording engineer: Arno Peeters

Ripsy Dots for mezzo-soprano

¿Hi ha res de més grotesc que tractar de reduir una vida, una passió, a un sol adjectiu?

Frida Sketches 						
for string quartet 
by Paul Max Edlin

Programme Note:
The Mexican painter Frida Kahlo had an extraordinary life.  Born in 1907, she died at middle age in 1954.  At six she developed polio and a terrifying bus accident in her teens meant that she suffered life-long physical and health problems.  She married the Mexican artist and muralist Diego Rivera, who was twenty years her senior.  They had a tempestuous marriage, divorced and remarried.  No doubt due to her illness and her confinement to bed or being strapped in a body cast, Frida became self obsessed and made many extraordinary self-portraits.  These self-portraits tell us as much about Mexican culture, religion and symbolism, about the tragedy of the country at that time, its politics and its history as they do about Frida and her love-hate relationship with Diego.  Frida also kept a diary, and that is yet another fascinating glimpse into this surreal artist’s equally surreal world.

As a composer who has been surrounded by visual art all my life and for whom surrealist painting is particularly relevant, Frida Kahlo’s work excites me.  Furthermore, I have a love for symbolism in music and enjoy transferring extra-musical ideas into music itself – thus a piece becomes even more than its apparent surface.  A piece ‘becomes’ what it is because of what inspires it and what drives it.  Using ciphers, Frida’s name, the names of those who were around her, the name of her home, etc all ‘create’ the musical notes.  The diary inspires the musical structure – especially the passages which are ‘stream-of-consciousness’ that are actually highly poetic and highly rigorous in design.  Finally, the music of Lotti’s ‘Crucifixus’ permeates passages, and so it should as this is music that alludes to Frida’s world and her own crucifixion as a result of that tragic accident.

Frida Sketches is a sketch about the woman and her world, and it is a starting point for me to track a new path.  The work was written for the Arditti Quartet to whom it is dedicated.  

This performance, by the Arditti Quartet, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 3rd June 2012.

© Paul Max Edlin 2012 

Frida Sketches (2012) - Arditti Quartet

In this song I go back to my roots. You can hear combinations of sounds produced by "Blister", what is the german word for "tablet packagings". The sounds were "deranged" by several mechanical and electronical devices. Hopefully you enjoy it. 

Kombinationen für Blister

Ocnos - 2016 - Nuria Núñez Hierro (1980)

for promotional purposes only:
Liza Lim: Ronda – The Spinning World (2016)
for 9 musicians: horn, tpt, tbn, harp, perc, vln, vla, vc, dbass + Smetak instruments (Ronda, Tres Sois, Piston Cretino)
Premiere: 25 February 2017, Ensemble Modern conduced by Vimbayi Kaziboni, Alte Oper, Frankfurt
Programme note: https://limprogrammenotes.wordpress.com/2016/12/26/ronda-the-spinning-world-2017/

Liza Lim: Ronda (The Spinning World), 2016

Y SUEÑA QUE SU SUEÑO SE REPITE perpetuo instante para guitarra sola (2016). Based in the poem "Muerte sin fin" by José Gorostiza. 

Performed by Frederik Munk Larsen​
Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, Denmark 2016.

Y SUEÑA QUE SU SUEÑO SE REPITE perpetuo instante para guitarra sola (2016)

Canticum Ostrava, Ostravska Banda-S.E.M. Ensemble
conducted by Joseph Trafton,
choir master Juri Galatenko
live from St. Wenceslas church 29th August 2017, Ostrava Days 2017

WINGS for voices and 4 string ensembles (Ostrava Days 2017)

Ascolta Ensemble. Teatro Central de Sevilla (Spain). 11-4-2012

Spuren, for ensemble (2012)

Interprété par le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, dirigé par Dina Gilbert au Bain Mathieu, le 8 juin 2018 
Enregistrement effectué en concert (par Kevin Gironnay)
Document d'archive

Mes plus grands remerciements à Normand Forget, à Alain Beauchesne, à Jérémy Chignec, à Lorraine Vaillancourt, à toute l'équipe du NEM, et aux interprètes:

Musiciens du NEM:
Geneviève Savoie, flûte
Julie Sirois-Leclerc, hautbois
Martin Carpentier, clarinette basse
*Charlotte Layec, clarinette basse
Michel Bettez, basson
Jocelyn Veilleux, cor
Lise Bouchard, trompette
Angelo Muñoz, trombone
Julien Grégoire, percussions
*Keiko Devaux, piano
Johanne Morin, violon
Lyne Allard, violon
François Vallières, alto
Julie Trudeau, violoncelle
Yannick Chênevert, contrebasse
(*musiciennes invitées)

¿Hi ha res de més grotesc que tractar de reduir una vida, una passió, a un sol adjectiu?

Luis A. Román Cárdenas

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