Contemporary Insights Ensemble, conducted by Zach Seely
Festival des Zentrums für Gegenwartsmusik, Leipzig, 16 June 2022

Rules of Engagement (2013-2019)
This cycle of three works focuses on Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008/9, commonly referred to as Operation Cast Lead. 

1. Hora’ot Pticha Be’esh (2013)
Fixed media
2. Al-Shifa (2014)
String quartet and fixed media
3. Sumud (2019)
Ensemble

The title of the third piece, Sumud, refers to the principle of steadfastness that has come to play a special part in the Palestinian ethos of resistance, be it overt political or military resistance or simply the everyday resistance of going about one’s life despite the suffering inflicted by the occupation. This piece uses a large ensemble and loosely takes up some of the pre-recorded sounds from the first piece, adapting them to a live setting. As in the second piece, these are references to certain sound worlds rather than actual quotations; a microtonally-tuned guitar mirrors the pre-recorded oud sounds, while the accumulation of percussion sounds and reed textures are taken up and given a new physical presence in the live situation. The principle of sumud manifests itself in the music’s insistence and ultimate distillation of expressive focus from conflict and unease.

The overall direction of the cycle, then, is away from concrete documentation and towards musical sublimation, towards something that is separate from the horrors of Cast Lead despite issuing from them. When I first arrived at this conception, I was slightly disturbed by what could be perceived as a de-politicisation, as a disappearance of the real world in the aesthetic. In the meantime, however, I have reached the position that despite the powerlessness of such music to counteract the ongoing ordeals of Palestinians, it is more meaningful – as long as one operates in the realm of art rather than direct activism – to attempt a transcendence of horror towards something that offers a trace of autonomy. In this respect, it is important that the cycle begins with Hebrew and ends with an Arabic title; although the soldier’s testimony is vital evidence, the voice of the occupier should not be granted the last word, and despite the victimisation of Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, they must not be reduced to mere victims. That is the ultimate message of the cycle.

https://wielandhoban.wordpress.com/2020/03/06/the-rules-of-engagement-cycle/

Sumud (Rules of Engagement III) (2019, large ensemble)

performed by Ensemble Recherche

Eduardo Olloqui, oboe/English horn
Shizuyo Oka, clarinet/bass clarinet
Klaus Steffes-Holländer, piano
Christian Dierstein, percussion
Melise Mellinger, violin
Åsa Åkerberg, cello

Recorded on 28/09/2022 in Freiburg

work commissioned for the Postcolonial Recherche project
https://www.ensemble-recherche.de/a-postcolonial-recherche

les chevaux de feu (2022) for six instruments / ensemble recherche

Sound Experiments with Foxhole Radio (2023)

Foxhole Radio Studies (no. 3)

Recorded during dress rehearsal, Tinguely museum Basel, 1/5/23

Guitars - Kukka Lukkarinen, Flavio Banni
Traverso - Laura Kopřivová
Russolo Intonarumori - Dániel Láposi
Conductor - Inbar Sharet

Recording - Caspar Johannes Walter

Three Little Dry Cracks for two classical guitars with objects, traverso & Russolo intonarumori

premiered by Schallfeld Ensemble at Klangspuren Schwaz 2023
directed by Pierre-Andre Valade

neon moon, for sextet

For choir and obbligato improviser; 
text from Lamentations 1:12 and "The Cry" by Denise Levertov, with permissions from New Directions Publishing

Commissioned & premiered by Khorikos with Charlotte Greve (alto saxophone), November 12, 2023, Shrine Church of St. Anthony of Padua, NYC.

The first line of Lamentations 1:12 is a question in the original Hebrew: “Is it nothing to you?” This is missed in the vulgate Latin translation into the widely spread "O vos omnes", but the question is more pertinent. Not only a call for help or pity, but implicitly a warning. Matthew Henry’s 1710 commentary puts it concisely: "Jerusalem sitting dejected on the ground calls on those that passed by to consider whether her example did not concern them. Her outward sufferings were great but her inward sufferings were harder to bear through the sense of guilt. Sorrow for sin must be great sorrow and must affect the soul.” Our sorrows now are certainly “great”, especially oriented towards a future whose imagination is inextricable from the specter of a more total destruction than ever before. Hence Denise Levertov’s poem, “The Cry,” which gives voice to that inward suffering through the very impossibility: “Nothing for eloquence / no rhetoric / fits / that unrendering” — paradoxically, it only made sense to try and work through this nothing, to sing in its face with the old and new words, to know your NOW only through what it could be, and choose accordingly with the ineffable escape route of sounds: the bird, the child, the choir, the saxophone. These real and poetic things, and the very efficacy of how they articulate themselves, are constantly shifting around uneasily over the course of this piece.

Is It Nothing

performed by Lítore Quartet

Jaime Estévez (soprano saxophone), Sira Pellicer (alto saxophone), Hugo Lomba (tenor saxophone), Miquel Flores (baritone saxophone)

recorded at the Cerezales Antonino y Cinia Foundation.
recording by Rafael Martínez del Pozo

work commissioned by Juventudes Musicales de España as part of the residency program JME-FCAYC

tras las aguas leteas (2023) for saxophone quartet

Sagardía
Vom Mut bewölkter Tage (2023)
für Harfe und Schlagzeug

Werkbeschreibung

Vom „Mut bewölkter Tage“ gehört zu einer Reihe von Stücken, die sich mit der Beziehung zwischen Sucht und Musik befasst. Das Stück wurde 2023 im Rahmen eines Lectureconcert mit dem Titel „Die Biologie des Verlangens“ (gehalten in der Galerie Nemtsov&Nemtsov) vom Duo Interconnections uraufgeführt. Ausgehend von der persönlichen Erfahrung der Drogenabhängigkeit und ihrer Überwindung mit Hilfe einer Entwöhnungstherapie im Jahr 2020, rückt die neurobiologische, psychologische und drogenpolitische Bestimmung des Abhängigkeitsbegriffs seitdem in den Vordergrund meines Komponierens. 
Gemäß einer Studie aus dem Jahr 2011 an der Universität von Toronto1 aktiviert Musik dieselben Regionen innehalb des zerebralen Belohnungsystems, die auch von psychoaktiven Substanzen oder psychoaktiven Verhaltenensweisen (social media, Autoraserei, Glückspiel u.a.) angesteuert werden, um Rauschzustände und Glücksempfindungen herzustellen. Das verschiebt den Diskurs über Sucht und Musik als zwei Strategien des Überlebens auf drastische Weise. Das zerebrale Belohnungssystem zwischen Erwartung und Befriedigung bewusst durch ein spezifische Zeitstruktur, nämlich rhythmischer ritardando-Modelle, die allesamt ausgeschrieben sind, anzusteuern: das ist das Ziel von „Vom Mut bewölkter Tage“. Die hörphänomenologischen Einschlagwirkungen dieser ritardando- und crescendo-Modelle bestimmen den Verlauf dieses Stückes. Die Musik bleibt so nicht einfach in einem Modell der Repräsentation stehen, sondern sie wird zum direkten Zeugnis eines Willens, zu überleben.

Sagardía, Berlin 2024
https://sagardiaoffice.wordpress.com/

Duo Interconnections 
Clara Simarro – Harfe
Richard Putz – Multipercussion
https://www.harp-percussion.com/

Aufnahme: decurio
https://www.decur.io/

Sagardía - Vom Mut Bewölkter Tage (2023) - Duo Interconnections - 2023

performed by Key Ensemble at the Tampere Cathedral
Tampere Biennale, Finland
April 13, 2024

full concert: https://areena.yle.fi/podcastit/1-68328598

fragments de l'aube (2015) for chamber choir / Tampere Biennale

GHB/tanzaggregat

Mark So | and suddenly from all this there came some horrid music
performed by:
Cristián Alvear (guitar)
Gudinni Cortina (turntable)

Mastered by A.F. Jones at Laminal Audio
Recorded at SOFA in Santiago de Chile
edition of 100
available at www.caduc.org

Sagardía - Vom Mut Bewölkter Tage (2023) - Duo Interconnections - 2023

SAGARDíA

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