Photo: Courtesy of The Megalopolis Saxophone Orchestra.

Recording: The Megalopolis Saxophone Orchestra, Live at Roulette Intermedium, NYC, October 2021.
Sound Engineering: Gleb Kanasevich & Andrew Steinberg

About:
“Kintsugi” is the Japanese practice of repairing broken porcelain and ceramics with gold. It is often referred to as “the art of precious scars,” and literally means “to repair with gold.” This comes as no surprise since Japanese aesthetic values marks of wear on used objects. For the Japanese, these marks become a part of both the object’s past and present, turning the practice of kintsugi into a statement of acceptance and non-attachment to the past; it is a gesture of adaptation to change. Such repair practices are related to the philosophy of “wabi-sabi” which embraces the flawed or imperfect. Indeed, kintsugi highlights the cracks and repairs with gold, turning them into beautiful events in the object’s life. In other words, kintsugi is a projection of human resilience on the material world. The object can continue serving its purpose, beautifully and bravely redefined after damage or breakage. 

In my work, the fragmented musical “object” is J.S. Bach’s famous Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor BWV 582 for organ, which has also been arranged for orchestra by a number of great conductors, choreographed by Roland Petit (“Le Jeune Homme et La Mort”) and was even used in the dark baptism sequence of "The Godfather" (1972). 
My own work for eleven saxophones begins with melodic fragments inspired by the Passacaglia; these set in motion a prelude-like, improvisatory development. As the movement unfolds, more and more harmonies are based on the original chordal functions of the ostinato theme, including its retrograde appearances. This pitch-centricity surrounding the fragmented ostinato is the axis of most harmonic and melodic processes. Throughout the piece, this “broken” sound is being “glued” back together, similarly to the kintsugi tradition. 

The second movement begins with the complete Passacaglia ostinato theme, the lower saxophones being just microtones apart. In this low register, the result is interference beatings that sound like extra pulses between these pitches, due to the proximity of their frequencies. Just like baroque passacaglias, this movement is in a triple meter, the low ostinato is present throughout the whole movement, and a number of variations unfold above it. I have also borrowed a number of longer melodic lines from the original Passacaglia and molded them into an environment of new harmonies, rhythms, expressive effects, and more, thus creating a new, “re-composed” musical entity. 

Kintsugi pivots from the unfamiliar to the familiar and invites the listener to observe the arduous negotiation between the old and the new. Catharsis comes in the end when the efforts of redefining and “gluing” the musical object back together culminate in the original Bach Passacaglia opening passage, arranged for saxophones. Nevertheless, after this journey, the original composition is bound to never sound the same again.

Kintsugi [2020]_for eleven saxophones

rapid change, anxiety, and exhaustion. 

ScoreFollower video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMoZCoctIGU

cello - Seth Parker Woods
Recorded at Northwestern University in November of  2021.

STRIX (2021, for cello and electronics)

(Demilitarized Zone), for chamber choir (SATB: 24 voices)
Photo: Courtesy of BCE and Donald Nally.
Based on the poem: "(Demilitarized Zone)," by Sun Yung Shin, from her book Rough, and Savage.  Copyright © 2012 by Sun Yung Shin.  Used with permission of Coffee House Press, www.coffeehousepress.org. | All Rights Reserved.

Artistic Director/Conductor: Dr.Donald Nally
Workshop Premiere by: The Bienen Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble | Galvin Hall, Evanston | March 6, 2022.
Live Recording: Bill Milgram
Audio Engineering: Benjamin Penwell

Poem excerpts set to music:
"[...]You remind me of a kind of heaven.
[...]thou dost
anoint my head: oil and rain,[...]
thou art not the making of my dreams—under water, under cliff,
under this long suitcase of earth and bombs.[...]
You need no ferryman or the obolus of the dead.
If I put a coin in my mouth I taste copper, not the corpse.[...]
The bones blur. We return alive."

END of poem excerpts.

Text by Sun Yung Shin (poet):
I wrote my poem "(Demilitarized Zone)" in 2007, after my third trip (out of five so far) back to my homeland of the Korean peninsula. For part of my trip I was a participant in a wonderful program called KEEP (Korea Education and Exposure Program) hosted by the Korean American organization Nodutdol. 

The DMZ on the 28th parallel is one the world's most fortified borders, on a planet of increasingly hardened borders between political entities. The United States has military control over South Korea and has several bases and tens of thousands of American troops on the southern half of the peninsula.  

It is a truly surreal and uncanny place in terms of its military and political built structures and practices, and of course, dangerous. There are thousands, perhaps a million, landmines along the thin ribbon of land separating the two Korean countries, partitioned by foreign powers at the end of active hostilities in 1953. 

There has been no treaty and as such the two Koreas are still in a civil war. The war and subsequent partition displaced and separated 10 million families, and for the vast majority of family members separated by the arbitrary border, permanently, and intergenerationally. 

In 2007, my KEEP group had the opportunity to tour the civilian control zone (CCZ) on the southern side of the DMZ. The CCZ provides an additional buffer of about 3 and 12 miles wide; access is limited but there is, or was, some rice farming that still takes place. It was a personally profound experience on so many levels. 

The DMZ, left relatively untouched since 1953, has become a site of flourishing indigenous biodiversity, an example of how ecologies can thrive when left alone. It’s a gorgeous green space, yet surrounded by tragedy, with death submerged in its earth. Asiatic black bear, Siberian musk deer, white-naped cranes, the iconic red-crowned crane make their home there among the mountains and wetlands.  

It has become one of the planet’s most pristine and unintentional nature preserves, “According to the Republic of Korea Ministry of Environment, 5,097 animal and plant species have been identified in the area, including 106 that are labeled as endangered or protected,” reported Smithsonian Magazine in 2018.

To learn about and support Korean diasporic pro-democracy and reunification efforts, please go to https://nodutdol.org/.

(Demilitarized Zone)[2021]_for mixed choir

Dedicated to the victims of the wild-fires in Attiki-Greece, that took place in 2021

TRAUMA_for_large_ensemble (Snippet)

NOUVELLES AVENTURES CICLE – KONZERTHAUS WIEN

Berio-Saal
Wiener Konzerthaus
Friday, April 22, 2022

Schallfeld Ensemble
Leonhard Garms, Conductor

The octet version of "les instances" is projecting an electrified sound world emerging from the musical synergies and the coexistence of an amplified ensemble with a synthesized, electronic soundscape. A continuum of interchangeable drives it, phrasal collages comprised of distinct sonic and rhythmical structures, both in the acoustic and the electronic parts. The structure is formulated by repetitive blocks and timbral constructs that engage horizontally and vertically (harmonically) and eventually forge the behavior and the dramaturgy of the music. At the core of my creative thinking lies the notion of repetitive exhaustion and dissolution of sonic material in frameworks of organic sound complexity. I am deeply interested in the impact of recursion on our perception of details and musical events at a micro and macro time level. The piece is heartily dedicated to George E. Lewis.

Les instances - octet version, for amplified ensemble and diffused, synthesised sounds (2019/20)

Reading session: Niki Harlafti (Greece, USA - 1987), Tee khe theemen

Dedicated to Antonis Sykaris, who died during his descent form the peak of mountain Dhaulagiri

ANTONIS_SYKARIS_YOU_LEFT_EARLY_(ASYLE) for small ensemble and fixed media

ALLEGORY for bassoon, live electronics & lights

FOR_VOICE_VERSION_II_2023 for alto voice and live electronics

To the Lighthouse (2017) ― Scene XIII

Claudia Jane Scroccaro - Overdrive (2020) 

Ensemble Musikfabrik
Carl Rosman, Bass Clarinet
Ulrich Löffler, Piano
Florentin Ginot, Double Bass

Rie Watanabe, condutor


Recorded live on the 6th of September 2020
Réfectoire des moines - Abbaye de Royaumont 

Lauréat de la Fondation Royaumont
Œuvre écrite dans le cadre de l’Académie Voix Nouvelles 2020

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Overdrive refers to the fuzzy and growly tone, produced by distortion in audio signal processing, often associated to electric instruments and mostly heard in Blues, Rock and Punk music. In my latest works I’ve been intrigued by bringing to the foreground the physical tension existing between the musician’s body and the body of his/her own instrument, in the act of playing, which is determined by the nature and production of specific sounds, like microtonal oscillations, capable to project the listener in immersive spaces and ever-changing spectra. In Overdrive, the necessity to enhance the energy and sonic (at)tension existing among three musicians confronted with such large instruments, able to produce very low frequencies, determined some extreme sonic and instrumental research together with the members of Musikfabrik, moving some steps forward, by bringing the consequences of this reflection over its limits.

Overdrive (2020) for Bass Clarinet, Double Bass, Piano

Photo (background): "Migdal," dance film by Anima Libera Dance Company. All Rights Reserved to Christos Kapatos.

Niki Harlafti is a Greek, Chicago-based composer. Her work pivots between sensitivity and violence, comedy and drama, musical and theatrical narrativity; it exists in the reflective space between the familiar and the unfamiliar, investing in the disruption and reinvention of recognizable patterns. Lastly, she is passionate about social justice and strives to make art in ways that reflect her values.

She has collaborated with Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, loadbang, ~Nois, CME (director: Alan Pierson), BCE (director: Donald Nally), The Megalopolis Saxophone Orchestra, guitarist Ruben Mattia Santorsa, bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward, saxophonist Thomas Giles, soon by Oros Ensemble, and others. Her works have been performed at Roulette Intermedium (NYC), LSO St.Luke’s (London), Rambert Dance (London), the DiMenna Center (NYC), Constellation (Chicago), Jordan Hall (Boston), Musikinstitut Darmstadt (DE), IYCA Ticino (CH), June in Buffalo Festival (NY), Ear Taxi (Chicago), ECCE Music Festival (FR), the Onassis Stegi (Athens, GR) and numerous dance film festivals.

Her recent works include "doRon eauTomb," a commission for violin and cello by the Onassis Foundation (Onassis Stegi, GR | 2024), "Tee Khe Theemen?" for five voices, premiered by Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, "The Blood of Others" for bassoon and electronics, premiered by Ben Roidl-Ward (Chicago | 2024), and the original soundtrack for the awarded dance film "Migdal" by Anima Libera Dance Company (GR | 2022).

In search of expressive means that transcend absolute music, she has collaborated with several poets, including Laura Mullen and Sun Yung Shin (U.S.), choreographers Mikaela Kanzafiri (GR) and Nancy Nerantzi (U.K./GR), film maker Christos Kapatos (GR), dramaturg/librettist Antigoni Gaitana (NYC/GR), painter Francisco Ledesma (MX) and other visual artists.

Niki holds a PhD in Music Composition from Northwestern University (Chicago), and a M.M. in Composition and Theory from New England Conservatory of Music (Boston). Her mentors include Hans Thomalla, Stratis Minakakis, Jay Alan Yim, and Anthony Coleman.

Kintsugi [2020]_for eleven saxophones

Niki Harlafti (Charlafti)

Recent comments

Doreen Winnett

Related tracks