String Quartet pieced commissioned and performed by Bergamot String Quartet

Pasemisi Pasemisa

Commissioned and performed by L'INSTANT DONNÉ, Mayu Sato-Brémaud (Fl.), Saori Furukawa (Vn.), Elsa Balas (Va.), and Nicolas Carpentier(Vc.). Recorded in March, 2021. 
The original piece is Moments Musicaux D. 780, no.3, composed by F. Schubert.

Metamorphosis of Moments Musicaux no.3(2020)

perf. by the National Estonian Symphony orchestra, cond. Olari Elts
concert recording / 10.9.2021

Commissioned by Musica femina München and composed for the Münchener Kammerochester, cond. Clemens Schuldt

"Hier ist alles Abstand, und dort wars Atem". R.M.Rilke. Die achte Elegie

Following the series of my aquatic pieces, “Apnea” (in latin “absence of breathing”) for string orchestra, written during the pandemic winter, reflects the importance of breathing whilst exploring the physical and emotional transformation during the immersion under the water. The macro form of the composition reminds of a very long breath-in and a gradual breath-out stretching the time in between while continuing to delay the climax and increase the tension until the limits. The orchestra is playing without any pause taking both the players and listeners through the existential odyssey.

"Apnea" for strings (2021)

Written for Alarm Will Sound, amplified sinfonietta and live keyboard sampler for the electronics.

Hasta que no pueda (2023)

LE PLEROME DES EONS (1998) pour 5 instruments / for 5 players

“In memoriam Sylvie Faliès (1969-1997”

Nicolas Vallette, flûte • Jérôme Schmitt, clarinette / clarinet • André Pons-Valdés, violon / violin • Georges Denoix, violoncelle / celo • David Selig, piano • Jean-Pierre Pinet, direction / conductor

CD François Narboni • Les Animals • Ensemble Stravinsky • Label 3D Classics, 2006, 3D8036

"Dans Le Plérôme des Eons, il y a un bruit pulsé. C’est un frottement inaudible, visuel. D’un épisode à l’autre, il devient horlogerie détraquée, tourbillon d’accords tournants et polyrythmie micro-intervallique. Comme le frottement aller-retour de la main gauche sur les cordes, la forme décrit une arche (en vérité, une arche double), et chaque partie de la  forme aussi, jusqu’au moindre élément (ainsi : le frottement aller-retour de la main gauche sur les cordes). Et, de polyrythmie micro-intervallique en tourbillon d’accords  détraqués, on revient au bruit pulsé (visible, inhabituel)... dans Le Plérôme des Eons."
(François Narboni)

LE PLEROME DES EONS (1998) pour 5 instruments / for 5 players

Sunflower Suite for sextet (2003)
live recording — Earplay, Mary Chun, conductor
13 March 2005, San Francisco, California

—————
Sunflower Suite (2003)

Prologue: Nature rarer uses yellow
I. A Fifth of a Miracle
II. riverbank sunset Frisco tincan vision 
III. Pile the bananas on planks.
IV. ¡Girasol de Fuego!
V. Weary of Time

Sunflower Suite takes Van Gogh’s ‘canvas all in yellow,’ his still life of fifteen sunflowers in London’s National Gallery, as a starting point for exploring the spectrum of shades of character associated with the color yellow: bright, loud, stark, bold, vibrant, irreverent, capricious, revelatory, blinding, redemptive... The image of the sunflower recurs throughout, refracted and transformed through the eyes of ‘visionary’ poets such as Dickinson, Ginsberg, Lorca, and Blake.

Imagine the prologue as a painter sifting through a bag of paints, considering various colors (the fragments of unrelated music that emerge from interspersed noise) before ultimately settling on yellow with the explosion that opens ‘A Fifth of a Miracle.’ The clarinet delivers the manic ‘sermon’ of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Sunflower Sutra’ in the second movement, where a four note chord (D-E-B-C#), analagous to the dead sunflower that triggers Ginsberg’s revelation, is progressively invigorated until the movement’s frenetic climax.

‘Pile the bananas on planks’ is Wallace Stevens’ rallying cry for raw, unmediated expression in American art; a mocking waltz is interrupted by irreverent, quasi-tropical interjections and a bass clarinet cadenza. A mischievous piccolo paints blossom patterns in fireworks in the dancing ‘¡Girasol de Fuego!’, while a muted cello sings a yearning wordless setting of William Blake’s transcendental ‘Ah, Sunflower!’ to close the suite.

Sunflower Suite was written for the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today series and was premiered in the summer of 2003, the sesquicentennial of Van Gogh’s birth, by members of the Philharmonia Orchestra on June 19th at London’s Royal Festival Hall and repeated June 20th at the National Gallery.

Sunflower Suite

Frisking- 11 musiciens - original set of percussions + wind players

2019 -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)

To learn more: https://www.luis-quintana.com/music-catalogue/smudges-over-dripping-ink

Smudges over dripping ink

This is a demo recording from the first concert at the WUK-Museum on 7th of November 2012.

Beat Furrer - Duo für 2 Violoncelli, 1985 (AUSSCHNITT)

Gerard Pesson - De loup & d´estoc pur deux violoncelles, 2007 (AUSSCHNITT)

2020 : Performed by members of Dal Niente
Instrumentation : Flute, Electric Guitar, Cello, and Piano

Saoco [2020]

www.luis-quintana.com

Luis Quintana’s music explores liminal spaces where tradition, memory, and nature dissolve into sound.

At the edge of cultures, where pulse blends with texture, his work is rooted in movement and reimagined heritage, inhabiting the porous boundary between popular and savant, ritual and abstraction. 

	He's an award-winning, Puerto Rican composer based in Paris. Equally at home with a wide range of media —acoustic, electronic, interdisciplinary—he has achieved international recognition by institutions such as the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Académie des Beaux-Arts in France, and the Contemporary Music Lab in Greece. His work engages with both, multiculturality as an aesthetic principle and ecology as a vehicle for expressions of identity. In this sense, he draws from a diverse array of musical traditions, techniques, landscapes, and art to create soundscapes that can serve as starting points for personal and emotional storytelling.

Smudges over dripping ink

Luis Quintana

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