premiered by Miroslav Beinhauer on April 28, 2023
MicroFest Prague 2023, Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, CZ

performed on the 36tet August Förster harmonium, originally built for the performance of Alois Hába's "Six compositions for sixth-tone harmonium."

the harvest manual, for 1/6-tone harmonium

portals II (everywhere and everything right now) performed by:

Nolan Hildebrand (no-input mixer and synthesizer)
Stef Haynes (woodwinds)
Louis Pino (percussion)
Chris Wiens (drum kit)

recorded and mixed by Josh Weinfield in the Electronic Music Studio at the University of Toronto

Commissioned by Freesound Ensemble

portals II (everywhere and everything right now) [third take]

Nothingness as an emergence (2018)
for prepared violoncello & electronics [+video & staging]


dedicated to Beatriz Picas Magalhães

(Photo: performance of Beatriz P. Magalhães at "Música Viva" Festival - O'culto d'Ajuda)

Nothingness as an emergence (2018) - for prepared cello, electronics and video [excerpt]

Recording by Loris Bini at PIC Télémaque in Marseille, November 17, 2019.

Programme note:

Know unknow xeknow is a transcription for voice and ensemble of a work for voice and electronics that I developed in close collaboration with soprano Sarah Albu entitled Xeno-. In that work, the singer imitates recorded sounds of animal vocalizations ad libitum. ‘Xeno’ being a greek prefix meaning ‘other’, the work examines the idea of onomatopoeia and empathy with the other through mimesis. When we imitate, something of our source filters through, but it is always reshaped by the imitator. In transcribing these imitations into written notation, a further layer of filtration is added; the work advances from a kind of oral tradition, to a written one, and finally returning to the aural as the musicians interpret the notation. As steps of transmission are added, we gain ways of knowing as much as we lose knowledge, or ‘unknow’. Through the act of transcription, I allowed my reactions to take their own shape, and the work has become something completely new, including the drawing of new source material inspired by Venezuelan electronic musician Arca’s work Piel.
	As with its parent work, Know unknow xeknow is structured in reaction to one of Zeno’s paradoxes: where that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal. These successively shorter half-way points are presented in reverse, where the musical energy of the piece unfolds through bursts of noise separated in successively greater distances. These kinds of ‘big bangs’ which unfold all the materials of the piece into a warping menagerie of being-transformation. 

Know unknow xeknow was co-commissioned by Ensemble Télémaque and Groundswell with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Know unknow xeknow - Ensemble Télémaque, Raoul Lay

Composer, Noise Artist
https://blackgalaxie.bandcamp.com/
https://nolanahildebrand.wixsite.com/mysite

portals II (everywhere and everything right now) [third take]

Nolan Hildebrand

Related tracks