***Please use your fanciest audio equipment*** 

- 1st Prize at the Iannis Xenakis International Electronic Music Competition (2021) form the Contemporary Music Lab 

The intention behind this piece is mainly to construct a discourse distanced from the elements that are traditionally explored in electroacoustic music, eg. texture and timbre. While these elements are undoubtedly present in the piece, it is first and foremost the rhythmic impetus — working around an unstable pulsation — its energy, as well as the imagery and the dramaturgy of the work that is highlighted. 

I have worked exclusively with a collection of sounds from my personal library as well as sounds that have been recuperated online (sort of objets trouvés), like a depository where I drew the parts that were best suited; hence the title “Junkyard Construction”. 
This comes from an interest to work with fairly limited resources (concerning equipment), which is also why it’s a stereophonic piece.
   
“Why stop the swing?” refers not only to the rhythmic content, but also to the swaying of unstable images that are being constantly re-contextualised, progressively detaching and revealing themselves as the inner drama unfolds.

Junkyard Construction: Why stop the swing?

for bass clarinet, viola and percussion
Ensemble l'Instant Donné: Mathieu Steffanus (bass clarinet), Elsa Balas (viola) & Maxime Echardour (percussion)-- Nicolas Brémaud (sound engineer) 

- Winner of the Boston New Music Initiative Commissioning Competition, USA(2022)

Débris d’instant furtifs a été travaillé en collaboration étroite avec l’ensemble l’Instant Donné. Durant l’atelier la pièce a traversé plusieurs versions, des nombreux fragments ont été écrits et réécrits ; comme il arrive souvent dans l’acte de composition : fait des essais, de recherches et des tâtonnements. 

Cependant ils n’ont pas tous subsisté, ni aux circonstances de l’atelier ni à mes exigences. Ce qui est empreint dans la partition n’est rien d’autre que les vestiges qui ont survécu. Une collection de bribes qui ont trouvé une forme, une manière de coexister ensemble comme un diptyque de contradictions où deux grands traits se trouvent en opposition.  

En premier lieu, il y a une volonté de travailler sur les rythmes populaires du caraïbe. Non pas pour les restituer mais au contraire, pour les déformer et en user à ma guise. Travailler avec le groove dans une sorte de collage de musique populaire composé des images musicales qui m’accompagnent depuis l’enfance.         

Face à ce collage rythmique une musique plus flottant (et aquatique) s’y oppose. Moins rigide et moins enjouée, elle dévoile un léger bercement qui reste suspendu ; où la musique ne se termine pas (…pas vraiment) elle s’arrête naïvement : laissée brisée, inaffirmée et suspendue.     

La pièce est très chaleureusement dédiée aux musiciens de l’instant donné (Mathieu, Elsa et Maxime — selon l’ordre de la partition) pour le temps qu’ils ont accordé à tous les tours et détours de ma pensée musicale.

Débris d'instants furtifs

Commissioned by the Eau Gallie Arts District and performed by the Brevard Symphony orchestra, conducted by Chris Confessore.

“On the ethereal nature of bioluminescence” draws inspiration from two different sources found in the Indian River Lagoon ecosystem in Florida: the natural environmental sounds and the bioluminescent effect at the surface of the water — mainly the sparks and colourful essence of this latter phenomena. It has been musically depicted through diverse diaphanous, crystalline and ghostly textures using firstly a particular harmonic imprint drawn from the sounds of the morning hours of the lagoon, as well as various ethereal playing modes on the strings. Among them are harmonics (producing a feeble high-pitch sound) or lightly-touched strings (resulting in an effaced rendition of the pitch), circular bowing (creating a filter effect of the sound — not unlike a wha-wha effect), flautandi and even flautandissimi (very gentle bowings), among others. Both of these elements conspire through the work to create a fragile sound suitable for such an ecosystem.

On The Ethereal Nature Of Bioluminescence

Immersive sound installation (2022) — Extract & stereo version

Gloup Splash Blup was created with sounds from various sources of marine life: fishes, shrimps, whales and seals, to name a few. They have been generously donated by various scientist and researches all around the globe.  

To learn more: 
https://www.luis-quintana.com/music-catalogue/gloupsplashblup

Gloup Splash Blup (Extract)

For voice, flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano 

Textos Invisibles-1

Textos Invisibles-2

For voice, flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano

Textos Invisibles-3

Memento (2015)
For piano solo 
performed by Jiyeon Kim 

Memento

for Flute Piccolo, percussion and electronics 
Flute: Manon Vacher, percussion: Brain Cocheril 

Glitch

"In Santeria, an Afro-American religion from the Yoruba, aguanilé is the spiritual cleansing of a place, often with water. Imagined as a study of the exploration of the saxophone’s percussive sounds (certain are reminiscent of “aquatic sounds”), Aguanilé refers to the rhythmic, dancing, magic spirit associated with this religious tradition."

Electroacoustic miniature, composed during the Ircam cursus.

Aguanilé

for alto saxophone and electronics 
performed by Mai Toyama at Festival Manifest (Juin 2018)

La nature de l'importun

Pour piano et ensemble.
Créé par l'ensemble intercontemporain et dirigée par Simon Proust.

- Grand Prize from the Ise-Shima Art Committee, Japan (2021) 
- First Prize at the Martirano Award Competition, USA (2021)
- First Prize at the New Classics International Composition Competition, Russia (2020)
- Honorable Mention at the Luigi Nono Composition Competition, Italy (2020)

"For this piece I have chosen a title that in all evidence derives from the pictural world. Smudges over dripping ink suited the poetic image that guided me throughout the composition process. The choice of an english title, a language with which I entertain a rather conflicting rapport, seamed  equally pertinent for its capacity to condense in a few words the intentions of this piece. Smudge is in fact a words that does not find its equivalent with ease in either of the languages with which I am familiarised. 

The present work has not been conceived as a concerto but rather as a piece where the piano has a central role, from which the music flows and drips ; analogue to a plastic artist who composes his canvas in time. The ensemble is therefore subordinate to the piano, is dependent to its propositions, gestures and whims. 

He (or it) proposes one note, as one would cast a drop of ink that collapses in the emptiness of the canvas. She is then blurred, smudged and transformed until inevitably losing its initial aspect and becoming nothing more than a blemish: an awkwardly delicate stain. Once dried, more ink would be thrown, this time dripping and effusing in all its fluidity, like a fragile and childish swaying that oddly resembles a music box. The flow of ink pursues, randomly and minutely, insinuating candid and playful images. It will not take long to brush it away until it's blurred, or even erased. And finally, as if displeased with the result, one throws one last sauvage burst of ink on the totality of the canvas until it's entirely covered…

The piece is conceived in one continuous mouvement, constituted of short sceneries, like “windows” that reflect the variations and transformations of the ink, its different mouvements, flows, its smudges."

Simon Proust(conductor, Sophie Cherrier (flute), Martin Adàmek (bass clarinet), Nicolas Arsenijevic (saxophone), Lucas Lipari-Mayer (trompet), Hidéki Nagano (piano), Hae-Sun Kang (violin), John Stultz (viola), Pierre Strauch (cello), Sulivan Loiseau (double bass)

Smudges over dripping ink

Percutativo (Extract)

pour voix de femme, percussion, ensemble et électronique

Orchestre des lauréats du Conservatoire
William Blank, direction
Amélie Raison, soprano

Cantigas do desassossego

www.luis-quintana.com

	Born in Puerto Rico, Luis Quintana is an internationally prized composer who develops his work in the field of contemporary classical music, extending the frontiers of his musical universe from concert music to acousmatic pieces and sound installations. Often inspired by nature and various forms of traditional and popular music, particularly Caribbean soundscapes, he confronts the conventional and the modern — recontextualizing these elements in a suggested and effaced manner.

Luis Quintana

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