simplex

Live recording 26 October 2025 Teatro Sao Pedro, Sao Paulo Brazil. Laiana Oliveira (soprano), soloists of l'Itinéraire ensemble (Mathilde Lauridon, Lucia Peralta, Myrtille Hetzel, Julie Brunet-Jailly, David Mengelle), USP Chamber Orchestra, Guri Santa Marcelina Young Choir, dir. Ricardo Bologna

Comissioned by l'Itinéraire Ensemble, French Gouvernement, with the support of OCAM USP

Live recording by Adonias Souza Jr.

Symphonia Botanica 04 Morning - 05 Jurema

Symphonia Botanica 02 Amoa Hi - 03 The Rose and Lily Song

Live recording 26 October 2025 Teatro Sao Pedro, Sao Paulo Brazil. Laiana Oliveira (soprano), soloists of l'Itinéraire ensemble (Mathilde Lauridon, Lucia Peralta, Myrtille Hetzel, Julie Brunet-Jailly, David Mengelle), USP Chamber Orchestra, Guri Santa Marcelina Young Choir, dir. Ricardo Bologna
Saison Officielle France-Brésil, Institut Français, Comissioned by l'Itinéraire Ensemble, French Gouvernement, with the support of OCAM USP

Live recording by Adonias Souza Jr.

Symphonia Botanica 01 Dream

A composition for melodica and live-electronics by Karlheinz Essl. It was commissioned by the Non-Piano/Toy Piano Weekend and premiered by Steven Tanoto on November 22, 2025 at Resonanzraum St. Pauli in Hamburg. Recorded and produced by Karlheinz Essl.

If we think of the organ as a giant mountain, then we can think of the melodica as a kind of shrunken-down version of that - a tump.

In my piece, this weak and humble instrument is given a powerful voice so that it can match with her great ancestor, the organ. The play on a melodica is manipulated by a sophisticated computer program (written in Max) that expands the sound in many dimensions. It is controlled by the player while performing the meticulously notated score. However, the musical result is not just an "orgified" version of the melodica. It is full of microtonal deviations, harmonic shifts and glissandi that are difficult to achieve on an organ. In a mesmerising interaction between the melodica, the performer and the computer software, we can listen to the mysteries of the reeds...

In a certain sense, the piece can be heard as a parable, telling the story of weakness and strength through the language of sound.

T.U.M.P. (The Ultimate Melodica Piece)

Info

T.U.M.P.  (The Ultimate Melodica Piece) for melodica and live-electronics  (2025)


Abstrakt Baritone originates from a single baritone saxophone recording, used as the primary material to construct a sonic landscape that preserves the instrument’s physicality while completely shifting its identity. The original sound is treated as a living body: fragmented, filtered, thickened, and pushed to the edge of recognizability through glitch processes, unstable overlaps, and micro-interruptions that open the way to a new timbral topology.

The piece does not aim to imitate the instrument’s acoustics; instead, it extracts its deepest grain — the inner breath of the baritone, the reed’s roughness, the low-frequency air vibration — and brings it into an electronic space functioning as a distorting lens. Structures emerge from precise gestures, shaped in Max/MSP, where each transformation operates more like an incision than an effect, carving a dense and physical sonic matter.

The form unfolds as a process rather than a narrative: an organism growing through accumulation and rarefaction, built on internal tensions, dynamic contrasts, irregularities, and controlled noise inflections. Listening becomes a traversal of timbral states, always suspended between what still belongs to the baritone sax and what belongs only to its electronic shadow.

Abstrakt Baritone is an inquiry into the transformation of acoustic source material, the persistence of instrumental gesture within processed sound, and the possibility of creating a new sonic identity from a single breath of brass.

www.rosariodirosa.com

abstrakt Baritone

Recorded on December 17th 2024, at Theater Pavillon Luzern by Musician's Eye.

PROGRAM NOTES:
"“One of the most unsettling aspects of climate change is the slow and irreversible transformation of the landscape. Mountain ranges once marked by millennia-old glaciers are year by year becoming increasingly bare, while ever more violent floods carve their slopes and plains at their feet, leaving deep traces of devastation. In compensation for the incessant melting of ice, seas and oceans are slowly rising, threatening to engulf everything living on their shores, as evidenced by the ever-higher tide marks that mark the walls of the buildings in Venice, in a kind of slow countdown to the city's extinction.

'Tides Slush Over the Walls' is a work that explores interactions between a bassnicophone, a timpano, and the body of a performer, extending them in space through electronics. The resonance of the timpano, upon which the bassnicophone is placed, along with the performer’s interventions, alters timbre, resonance, and perceived pitch. Meanwhile, the electronic component amplifies these unstable transformations, generating events that invade the listening space like a tide, only to recede and leave behind remnants—sometimes floating, sometimes submerged. 
Form as an immersion in listening, both above, below, and through the surface.” – Maurizio Azzan

Maurizio Azzan - Tides Slush Over The Walls

Nava Hemyari (voice) & Karlheinz Essl (electronics). Part of the album "Karanava" (2025).
Two composers, differing in terms of gender, age, cultural background and instrument, leave their writing desks and venture into the unknown. Despite — or perhaps because of — these differences, they create something genuinely new together: songs composed instantly, without any prior planning, in the moment.
https://www.essl.at/div/karanava.html

Karanava

Pancakes

Karlheinz Essl & Nava Hemyari: Pancakes (2025)

Free improvisation on a MakeNoise 0-COAST in two parts, using the two generators of a KORG NTS-2 oscilloscope as modulation sources. A passive Doepfer A-183-1 dual attenuator is used to attenuate certain signals. Performed live at Studio kHz on 30 December 2025. Recorded with an iPhone.
https://www.essl.at/works/coastlines.html

simplex

mattebass