“There is green darkness and red darkness, the darkness of deep water and the darkness of fire underground.” —Gaston Bachelard, Earth and Reveries of Will

Λαμπάδες was written for Jack Adler-McKean.

Λαμπάδες

Excerpt from BYE BYE LOVE, performed by Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, 30 April 2023 at the TECTONICS Festival, Glasgow City Halls, Glasgow. 

mm. 176 - 226.

Reproduced with permission of BBC Radio 3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03q8r97
This excerpt will be public until 21 December 2024.

Contact Ian Power with inquiries at ianhpower@gmail.com.

“These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands. . .”
Julia Kristeva, 1980

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BYE BYE LOVE for orchestra [excerpt]

Otra máquina célibe (2013) - Distractfold, Leeds 05.2014

s. sx., ob., perc., pno., e. gtr., vla., cb.

Performed by Dal Niente at Harvard University, 16 May 2015.

Ryan Muncy, Andrew Nogal, Eric Derr, Mabel Kwan, Jesse Langen, Ammie Brod, Mark Buchner

bind me, take me, amplifier, humidifier is about heartening backgrounds: the background radiations of existence, both aural and psychological, against which I live, subconsciously buoyed by their referential baseline, only noticing them when they're gone, a noticing which manifests as desperation, longing, and an awe at the dutiful devotion with which their work is carried out. This music is as much about the performers' familiarity with and trust in each other, and me, as it is about the specific sounds they make.

bind me, take me, amplifier, humidifier

Trees mark time in the twists they make over the course of branches’ growth. Arms rise sinewy in their turnings-to-sky to fall earthward again in a tracery of parts and of the slow-moving shapes of time.

The piece is about time and about the ways the flow of time changes the colors and sounds and loudnesses we hear in music. Fourteen materials circulate through the piece. Piano chords resonate with the echo of other instruments; plucked strings fall from high to low and then rise again back up; broken bits of counterpoint pile up between the oboe, clarinet, harpsichord and violin; long notes in the viola and cello give way to the rustle of brush bristles; stones travel in circles across hard pieces of slate brought into the concert hall from outside. Running through these materials (and the others that stack up on and between them) is the arrow of musical time. The gnarled time that runs through the piece shares something with the time that grows the branches of trees towards the sky and then turns them heavy towards the ground with age: in the shapes of branches left over at the side of the trail we experience in a glance the distillate of years. So goes the analogy with the course of musical time in the piece: the materials and their colors pass us by in shapes that are the fantastic leftovers of something we no longer see.

Krummzeit was written for ensemble mosaik in 2014 and is scored for clarinet in E-flat (doubling bass clarinet), oboe, piano (doubling harpsichord), percussion, violin, viola and cello. The piece was premiered on the 4th of October 2014 on the campus of Harvard University by ensemble mosaik under the direction of Jonathan Hepfer.

This performance is a recording of the premiere.

Krummzeit (2014) for seven players

Pedro Alvarez 
Inherent Nodes (2009)
for soprano, alto, tenor, bass and contrabass guitars. 
Consort Guitarrístico de Chile. 
www.pedroalvarez.info

Inherent Nodes

the second half of a recording made by the London Contemporary Soloists, 2015

string quartet (second half) (2009)

Huitzil is the Nahuatl word for hummingbird.

The inscription at the top of the score reads:

She says: “Do not look in his eye but whisper instead to his ear. His giant round ear let to droop from the weight of obsidian curves of the lobe. He will ask you to pierce the bend of his tongue with the needle-sharp point of your beak. But pierce you must not. You must carry to him my record of dreams and the future they describe as I sleep. You must speak silently to him the words of our wedding and the wishes of birds that they carry with them as their freight. He will remember our dreaming-together and the heaviness we shared in our sleep. Then he will close his eyes. And when he does you must brush with your wings the bend of his ear and leave there like sand the husks of my words which he in his sleep will know but not hear. Then in the daylight he will carry with him our record of dreams and the future they describe as I sleep.” Hummingbird carries her words like salt on his wings and takes to the sky in his flight.

Huitzil was commissioned by Alan Toda-Ambaras who gave the premiere on 22 November 2015 at Cabot House on the campus of Harvard University.

This performance is from a studio recording made by Alan Toda-Ambaras in December 2015.

Huitzil (2014) for cello

Die Spanische Reise des Oswald von Wolkenstein (1976) ᛫ Ulsamer Collegium ᛫

Martin Iddon is a composer and musicologist. His musicological work largely focuses on new music in West Germany and North America. His music has been performed in Europe, North America, and Australasia.

Λαμπάδες

MartinIddon

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