In the work Materia Salvaje, I explore the semantic possibilities of the word “salvaje”, the Spanish word for “savage.” The violent, the untamed, the grotesque, the primal, the radical, and the excessive, struggle for dominance in the piece, thus establishing a polarity between the organic and the inorganic, between that which follows from an idea of nature, and that which is unnatural, the product of human excesses. The work begins with breaths that gradually fill the instrument with sound. Inhalations and exhalations collapse into growls and moans that give way to a clear-sounding note. Melodies intertwine with short repeated notes that resemble birdsongs, giving the impression of a constant flux between tempi. As these gestures come to completion, the work introduces a recording of verses by Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, whose Cántico Cósmico fuses quantum mechanics, cosmogonies, theology, and the grueling history of Latin America into an epic song cycle of Homeric proportions. The verses I extracted for my work explore a particularly violent scene where a pregnant woman’s womb is pried open by counter revolutionary forces in Managua. At its closure, the stanza leaves us with the unborn child at gunpoint, suggesting a bleak cycle of inherited atrocity, of coming into a world whose matter organizes into its own annihilation from the outset. As the saxophone explores a wide gamut of harmonic possibilities, the recorded voices of the poem are manipulated so as to slowly remove the traces of the human, leaving an irreducible grain that can now barely be mapped into the anthropomorphic. Only the birds remain at its closure. Erratic flapping wings and melodies guide a return to the beginning, to breath. 

What I sought to investigate in Materia Salvaje was not only the possibilities of a sound that slipped through the cracks of convention. I sought, fundamentally, to devise a musical language that came to terms with the body’s pain, with the sounds that inhere in torture. In this black hole of suffering, language no longer seems to suffice. There are no words. Cardenal, however, forged a language from this very moment, and his work led me to pursue a question whose answer I seek in my practice and in the years that follow as a graduate student of composition. If there is no language, is there at least a sound? What could be gained or lost by inhabiting this threshold where the flesh becomes word and becomes sound, or perhaps something in between? I envision a future in music where these questions cultivate works that constantly bring to the fore the limitations of communication while simultaneously and relentlessly imagining its possibility.

Recital de Graduacion 2016

Materia Salvaje (for Tenor Saxophone and Fixed Media)

Composed in May of 2014, the work entails a timbric exploration that takes its cue from the amplification of a prepared acoustic instrument. The guitar abandons its role as an accompanying instrument to transform into a laboratory where controlled blows, scratches and scrapes with utensils unleash complex spectrums. However, a lyricism invades the work, linking the trial and error of experimentation with the vulnerability of an affective state that could be summarized as falling in love. The work remains as an archive of the interplay between abstraction and definition, between fixed values and polyvalence.

...como un sonido que suena al amor

Danza Alborotada de las Cosas

Performers:
Saylí Pérez - Voice
Flute - Valeria Sosa
Clarinet - Jonathan Cosme
Piano - Ángel Persia
Electric Guitar - John Rivera Pico
Percussion 1 - Jose Fabían Rosa
Percussion 2 - Alfonso Piacentini
Percussion 3 - Franchesca Ortiz
Violin - Joseam López
Viola - Lourdes Negrón
Violoncello - Carlos Fernández Marroquín

Apuntes De Campo Mov. 3

Performers:
Voice - Saylí Pérez
Flute - Valeria Sosa
Clarinet - Jonathan Cosme
Piano - Ángel Persia
Electric Guitar - John Rivera Pico
Percussion 1 - Jose Fabían Rosa
Percussion 2 - Alfonso Piacentini
Percussion 3 - Franchesca Ortiz
Violin - Joseam López
Viola - Lourdes Negrón
Violoncello - Carlos Fernández Marroquín

A wandering and moribund bird is the protagonist of the poem Apuntes de campo by the Puerto Rican poet Pedro Javier Rolón. The composition utilizes the poem as a source, replicating its form and deriving its materials from the semantic richness of the text. The varied timbral noises of ...como un sonido que suena al amor are subjected to rigorous spectral analyses, that along with the partials of E 41.2 hertz, comprise the harmonic basis of the piece. The first movement establishes a duality between harmonic areas — places of higher stability where pitches are more consonant— and inharmonic areas —complex sounds that result from the clashing of frequencies. These zones of intricate sonorities function as a noise filter, degrading each repetition of the E1 spectrum until there is virtually no difference between both objects. The nature of the text suggests acceleration. However, this impetus is restrained by the music until the passing of time compresses space, resulting in falling scales that after a brief pause conclude with the total disintegration of sound, a great orchestrated noise.

Apuntes De Campo Mov.1

Lejano—Cercano was composed in the fall of 2017. It stems from a graphic score I titled “Sonotropes”, comprised of a constellation of geometric shapes which served as the basis of the work. They were paired with musical instruments that seemed to have some synesthetic relation with them. At the outset of my imagination for this piece was an interest in the relationship between sound and movement. As heliotropes, flowers that move in relation to the shining sun, I wondered how this relationship could be expressive of a movement predicated on hearing. This idea also echoed a broader interest in the nature of displacement and migration, two forms of movement that define our contemporary moment. These shapes were mapped within a grid. The vertical axis assigned pitches, the horizontal axis suggested temporal positions. The resulting image suggested a form where constant growth and decay intermingle, and this motif is expressed in the piece as sounds swell and decline, initially sounding far off, becoming more prevalent with passing time. Gradually, the global structure becomes denser, reaching an apex of continual tension by the middle of the piece. What then follows is the opposite process, a constant release that culminates with stasis.

Musicians:

Voice — Rodolfo Córdova
Flute — Ricky Crews
Bass Clarinet — John Ivers
Piano — Greg Kappes
Vibraphone — Tony Gennaro
Electric Guitar — Marc Zollinger
Violin — Golnaz Shariatzadeh 
Viola — Tavya McCoy
Contrabass — Lee Hodel

Lejano—Cercano

Fuente

Sinusoid

Chroma

Mitch Stahlmann — Flute
Donggnuk Kim — Violin
Roco Córdova — Voice

Unísono

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Roco Córdova is a vocalist, composer, producer and improviser based in the San Francisco Bay Area. They possess a B.Mus. in Composition from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and an M.A. in Composition from Mills College in Oakland, California. They have studied under the guidance of Carlos Carrillo, Manuel Ceide, Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins and James Fei. As a singer they have trained under the instruction of countertenor Paul Flight and have participated in vocal advancement workshops with Meredith Monk. 
Their music has been described as "slow-boiling, apparently timeless" with "an odd momentum of its own" (The Washington Post). Cordova's work fuses diverse influences with electronic media, chance operations, gradual processes, noise, improvisation, and timbral techniques of composition. Their compositions explore intersections between literature, visual arts and sound. Voice is at the core of their music making: they incorporate extended techniques like throat singing, overtone singing, falsetto, yodeling, and vocal clicks and pops into live performances that emphasize the electronic processing of these sounds. Recently, they have been focused in exploring the intersection between their practice as vocalist-improviser with electronic dance musics.
As a touring vocalist and improviser with The Art Ensemble of Chicago, they have performed in venues including but not limited to: The Tennessee Theater in Knoxville, Tennessee; The Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago, Illinois; SESC Pompéia in São Paulo, Brazil; The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.; and the Maison des Arts in Créteil, France.Roco recently soloed and performed the role of Pilate with the California Bach Society in their 2022 performances of the St. John Passion. They have also collaborated with artists like Monopiece, Dirt and Copper, Theresa Wong, GeraldCaselDance, La Macacoa and Danistha Rivero.
A selection of Roco’s work can be found at: https://linktr.ee/rococordova.

Roco Córdova

Popular tracks