Contemporary Instrumental Music

New Music (Unlisted-2)

Music To Play

Klassik

Music to listen to!

. conducted by Massimo Mazzeo
. recorded at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, September 28th 2012
. Festival Jovens Músicos 2012
. awarded at SPA/Antena 2 Composition Contest 2012

o que será do rio without John Cage? - Divino Sospiro baroque orchestra

"I could not think of thee as piecèd rot"
for soprano and orchestra

conductor - Magnus Lindberg
soprano - Inês Simões
Gulbenkian Orchestra

composer - Nuno da Rocha
words by - James Joyce & Fernando Pessoa

Sleep now, O sleep now, 
   O you unquiet heart! 
A voice crying 'Sleep now' 
   Is heard in my heart. 

The voice of the winter 
   Is heard at the door. 
O sleep, for the winter 
   Is crying 'Sleep no more.' 

My kiss will give peace now 
   And quiet to your heart - 
Sleep on in peace now, 
   O you unquiet heart! 
(James Joyce)

I could not think of thee as piecèd rot,
Yet such thou wert, for thou hadst been long dead;
Yet thou liv'dst entire in my seeing thought
And what thou wert in me had never fled.
Nay, I had fixed the moments of thy beauty -
Thy ebbing smile, thy kiss's readiness,
And memory had taught my heart the duty
To know thee ever at that deathlessness.
But when I came where thou wert laid, and saw
The natural flowers ignoring thee sans blame,
And the encroaching grass, with casual flaw,
Framing the stone to age where was thy name,
    I knew not how to feel, nor what to be
    Towards thy fate's material secrecy.
(Fernando Pessoa)

premiere at ENOA's Concert - Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 12th September 2014.

recorded by Antena 2.
(photo by Márcia Lessa)

I could not think of thee as piecèd rot - for soprano and orchestra

"Philippina"
double concerto for Trumpet, Accordion and Wind Orchestra

composer: Nuno da Rocha

trumpet: Marco Silva
accordion: João Barradas

conductor: Alberto Roque
orchestra: ESML Wind Orchestra

premiere
7th june 2014, Vianna da Motta auditorium, Lisbon - Portugal

audio
recorded by: Alexandre Gonçalves, André Alves, Martim Souto
edited by: André Barroso

"Philippina" - double concerto for Trumpet, Accordion and Wind Orchestra

This piece was performed by Wet Ink Large Ensemble at the Dimenna Center for Classical Music in April 2015.

Instrumentation: fl, ob, b.cl, t.sax, tpt, tbn, pno, perc, 2 vln, vla, vlc, electronics

Ocean waves are so darn peaceful and meditative with their “shhhhhhhhhSHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhooooooooooooo, shhhhhhhhhSHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhooooooooooooo, shhhhhhhhhSHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhooooooooooooo” OVER and OVER and OVER. White/Waves begins with an instrumental shhhhhhhhhSHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhooooooooooooo vibe in the ensemble juxtaposed with raucous, Nirvana-squelching ruh-buh-ruh-buhs in the piano and warbly Zen-blocking WEEEooooWEooWEEEoooos in the electronics. The B-section material began with shhhhhhhhhSHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhooooooooooooo field recordings from Sunset Beach, NC, but I wanted them to sound more manic and unpredictable so I sculpted the waves into filtered bursts, blips, swells, and sweeps and put them in dialogue with frenzied instrumental waves and orchestrated new versions of the sculpted white noise bursts, blips, etc.

WARNING: this piece in the key of Queen Bey Major (so you might hear some Beyoncé and some B-major chords).


White/Waves

Solo trio --> standard-modell (Antoine Alerini, Noam Bierstone & Joshua Hyde)
Ensemble --> Orchestre des Lauréats du CNSMDP
Conductor --> Laurent Cuniot

"… Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, ni dans les opérations de l’art, ni dans celles de la nature, et l’on peut poser en principe que, dans tout opération, il y a une égale quantité de matière avant et après l’opération ; que la qualité et la quantité des principes est la même, et qu’il n’y a que des changements, des modifications…”. 
Extract from “Traité élémentaire de chimie” (1777) - Antoine Lavoisier



and matter was (not) perfectly conserved [2015] • for trio, ensemble & electronics

RESTART for orchestra
(commission by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian)
Nuno da Rocha

Gulbenkian Orchestra 
dir. Joana Carneiro

recorded by RTP / Antena 2 (9th October 2015)
(premiered on 8th October 2015 at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian)

audio edition: João Dionísio

program note:

RESTART é uma metáfora sobre a anarquia que percorre a minha cabeça. RESTART representa
a minha liberdade, de fazer, de pensar e de partilhar com os outros. De viver com os outros. É uma pergunta. E talvez não responda a nada. Eu creio que talvez seja uma afirmação política. O pensamento é anarca. Esta partitura é anarca. Embora uma partitura nunca seja anarca. Mas esta é quase anarca. RESTART é um pequeno coral de Bach numa tela do Francis Bacon. RESTART é uma tela do Francis Bacon que ele nunca chegou a pintar. São os músicos da Orquestra Gulbenkian que fazem a RESTART.
É deles. O primeiro acorde é deles e o último é de todos nós. RESTART foi escrita para o reiniciar deste palco nesta temporada. Nesta casa. RESTART é uma agressão à palavra, à linguagem verbal. Esta linguagem inventou a religião. Separou o Homem. A música só-música não.
É anarca como eu.

RESTART for orchestra

Live recording of ensemble recherche at Harvard University, 21 May 2016.

Martin Fahlenbock, Shizuyo Oka, Barbara Maurer, Åsa Åkerberg, Melise Mellinger, Jaime González, Klaus Steffes-Holländer, Christian Dierstein
— ensemble recherche

Clara Iannotta, John Pax
— guest performers

James Bean
— audio engineer

Anthony DiBartolo
— recording engineer

http://chrisswithinbank.net/2016/05/union-haze/

union|haze

union|haze (ensemble recherche)

"where the murmurs die" - for guitar & orchestra
[HEADPHONES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]

Natalya Makovskaya - Guitar
Orchestre des Lauréats du CNSMDP
Philippe Aïche - conductor

where the murmurs die [2016] • for guitar & orchestra

Evan Johnson - Rückenfigur for solo tuba:

1. rassegnato / privato
2. eco distratto-"rassegnato / privato"
3. marginale / privato
4. spettrale come catastrofico (marginale / privato)

Tuba: Jack Adler-McKean

Recorded in Oxford on 5th March 2017
Recording Engineer: Nigel McBride

Evan Johnson - Rückenfigur

trace - écart - for harp, electric guitar, cymbalum, double bass & electronics

Ensemble C Barré
Eva Debonne - harp
Cyril Dupuy - cymbalum
Thomas Keck - guitar
Charlotte Testu - double bass

Mónica Gil & Rudy Romeur - sound engineering

Premiered @ Festival Messiaen au Pays de la Meije 2017
Recorded @ GMEM Marseille

trace - écart [2017] • for harp, electric guitar, cymbalum, double bass & electronics

para comprar o disco / to buy this album:
nunodarocha.bandcamp.com
www.mpmp.pt

"Mesmo que faça frio"
Ciclo de Canções para 8 vozes femininas e Piano Preparado / Songs for 8 female voices and Prepared Piano

album "Mesmo que faça frio"
Nuno da Rocha's works for Children's Choir

Instituto Gregoriano de Lisboa Children's Choir
conductor. Filipa Palhares

piano. Pedro Ferro
voices. Carolina de Andrade, Madalena d'Oliveira Martins, Sara Megre, Mariana Rodrigues, Raquel Rebordão, Ana Varela, Rita Miranda, Beatriz Ferreira

text by J. Tolentino Mendonça

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

production. Tangente
audio. Cláudio Carvalho | Estúdio SantaRosa | Underdog Music Solutions 
cover & layouts. Guilherme Campos Gil

recorded at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (June 2013, October 2016)

supported by 'Antena 2' and 'mpmp'

Mesmo que faça frio

This is a prelude to the coming full length album.

Screensaver Prelude

take your time the time will take you

Uti Vår Hage

Chante En Mon Coeur Pays Aimé

'On the celestial hierarchy' for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, viola & cello
Composed 2014

Live performance by neuverBand at Kustraum Walcheturm, Zurich on 12 Nov. 2018, Mike Svoboda, conductor

'On The Celestial Hierarchy' (2014) for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, viola & cello

Live performance of Héraclite, piece composed by Alex Nante for Awkas Ensemble. 

Bern, Switzerland, October 2018.

Héraclite (2017) by Alex Nante

Ensemble Modern&HR  Frankfurt/M.

Solistin : Nina Janßen-Deinzer

Edition Peters Frankfurt/M. 
https://www.edition-peters.de/cms/deutsch/general/komponist.html?composer_id=3425

iv 7 für Kontrabassklarinette

« ... What would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where every instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed … »

(Samuel Beckett)

FRANCISCO ALVARADO
corps et ombre ensemble s'engloutissent [2018]

Florentin Ginot - double bass

Ensemble LINEA
Adam Starkie - clarinet / bass clarinet
Marie Andrée Joerger - accordion
Victor Hocquet - percussion
Ieva Dudaite - prepared piano
Marco Fusi - violin
Elodie Gaudet - viola
Elsa Dorbath - cello

Claire Levacher - conductor

Éditions Durand

Premiered @ Opéra National du Rhin / Festival Musica 2018
Aide à l'écriture d'une oeuvre originale du ministère de la Culture 2018

---------------------------------------------

Taken from Samuel Beckett’s « textes pour ne rien dire », the quote « corps et ombre ensemble s’engloutissent » was an inspiration to stablish a body/shadow type of relationship, in three different layers in this piece. The relationship between the double bass player and its instrument, between the soloist instrument and the ensemble and finally, between the double bass sonorities and the musical material construction, through them.

	What most interested me in this Beckettian image is that shadow no long exists as a reflection of the body, damned to follow each given dictated gesture. By engulfing themselves, they are at the same level, trying to annihilate one another, “pills in the void”.

	I used this idea to elaborate the musical material. One could say that the double bass works as the body. Indeed, I started by composing the double bass line and by making spectral analysis of the sounds of this line (using informatic tools). I could extract notes, harmonic champs, rhythms, in short, a very rich musical reservoir that allowed me to write the ensemble part afterwards – the shadow. Nevertheless, during the piece, the ensemble will emancipate, proposing new sonorities that will be used by the double bass, gradually alternating roles. This ambiguity concerning the source, will be established from the beginning of the piece, that starts with an ensemble opening, that we may consider firstly as the “body”, but which is actually composed by sounds that the double bass will play later on, in a kind of anticipated consequence.

	The body/shadow relationship is also used to manage the instrumental density of the score, in the soloist, ensemble and tutti passages of the piece. Even if the double bass is clearly presented as the soloist, it is often delicately doubled by other instruments. It will melt sometimes with the ensemble or it will clearly play as the shadow of another instrument.

	Finally, the most visible body/shadow connection is the one between the double bass player and its instrument. Actually, we may have the impression of seeing two dancing bodies. Even if it is the player who drives the instrument, the last one, being considerably big, impose its rhythm, its cadence, a sound inertia.
As this implicit choreography evolves, one may ask the question: which on is the body, which one the shadow? And finally, which one is engulfing the other one?

corps et ombre ensemble s'engloutissent [2018] • for doublebass & ensemble

OPTICAL FLOW 1.1.1.1. 1.1.1. Perc.1, Perc.2, Hrp, Pno, 1.1.1.1.1 and electronics.
Premiered in April 2013 at CNSMDP, conducted by Robert HP Platz.

OPTICAL FLOW [2013] • for ensemble & electronics

Paul Clift (b. 1978 in Melbourne) is a composer of instrumental and mixed music. Since 2016, he is based in Basel, Switzerland. His music often attempts to make concrete associations with a variety of concepts such as modernist literature, collective memory and historical musical traditions, notably through the integration of archival recordings in his works. His compositional outlook is marked by formative studies with Franck Bedrossian, George Benjamin, Jean-Luc Hervé, Fred Lerdahl, Philippe Leroux, Fabien Lévy and Tristan Murail. 

His music has been programmed at festivals including ISCM World Music Days (Tallinn), Agora and Festival Ensemble(s) (both in Paris), Weimarer Frühjahrstage für zeitgenössische Musik, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, ReMusik (St. Petersburg), MATA (New York), Rainy Days (Luxembourg), Musikfestival Bern, SMC Lausanne, Koper Biennale (Slovenia), Close Encounters (Georgia), Ultima (Oslo), Unerhörte Musik (Berlin), Klangraum (Stuttgart), AFEKT (Berlin/Tallinn), Sounding Now (Singapore), Music and Art: Sound Correspondences (Spain), SMC (Athens) and the World Exposition in Milan, among others, and has been performed by ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, Ensemble l'Itinéraire, JACK and Mivos Quartets, L’Instant Donné, Contrechamps, ICE, Ensemble l'Imaginaire, Proton, Neofonía, Novel Ensemble Modern, Adapter, Vortex, Argento, TAG, Trio Sæitenwind, Sentieri Selvaggi and Vertixe Sonora. In 2019, his large-scale scenic work “Portal Fantasies,” composed in collaboration with cultural historian Barbara Piatti, was premiered at the Zeiträume Biennale für neue Musik und Architektur in Basel. 

Paul Clift obtained a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Columbia University, New York, a Masters of Music at King's College, London, and participated in the two years of the IRCAM Cursus, culminating in the premiere of “With my limbs in the dark” for chamber ensemble, electronics and augmented dancer, composed in collaboration with choreographer Alban Richard. He also attended masterclasses including Royaumont Voix Nouvelles, Centre Acanthes, Domaine Forget, IMPULS, June in Buffalo, MATRIX, Internationale Sommerakademie der MDW and the Darmstadt Ferienkursen. 

Paul Clift is the Artistic Director of Ensemble Recherche. His scores are published by Schweizer Musikedition and are also available online at www.babelscores.com.