Name: At the edge of his dreams... (2017) by SamCave
Duration: 10 min 9 s
Description: Live world premiere recording at the Thornham Summer Festival. Commissioned by the Thornham Summer Festival, performed by Adrien Bernege (clarinet in Bb), Fra Rustumji (violin), Corentin Chassard ('cello), Sam Cave (guitar), Bartosz Glowacki (accordion), Guillaume Mathias (piano) and the church bellringers of Thornham Magna. Conducted by Jon Hargreaves .

In a cross-tuning of 84-tone equal temperament and 13-limit just intonation.

Amélie Berson, flute
Phoebe Bognár, bass flute
Mireia Pellisa Martín, alto saxophone
Thierry Madiot, bass trombone
Carlo Sampaolesi, accordion
Félix Lacquement, electric guitar
Paola Aviles, harp
María Alejandra Jiménez, violin
Adèle Viret, cello

Commissioned by GMEA – Centre National de Création Musicale d’Albi-Tarn. Recorded live at the Athanor in Albi, France on August 6, 2022  by Benjamin Maumus – GMEA's sound engineer.

Commande du GMEA – Centre National de Création Musicale d’Albi-Tarn. Enregistrement à l’Athanor à Albi le 6 août 2022 et mixage par Benjamin Maumus – ingénieur du son du GMEA.

Nocturne (2022) for harp, electric guitar and ensemble

At the centre of this piece is a struggle for dominance, between the live player and the electronic tape; and the player’s fight for independence. It was inspired by a number of things: an episode of Doctor Who, a video game about the rapture, and my own relationship with/uncertainty about technology.

In the Doctor Who episode ‘Midnight’, an unknown being starts to echo people’s voices, then speaks alongside them, and then assumes their voice and makes them the echoer. In ‘Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture’, an entity from space is brought down to Earth and adapts bit by bit, until eventually it removes every person from existence. And even though I am part of the millennial generation, I am already feeling left behind by technology: there is an app for every facet of life, it seems, and I am increasingly uncomfortable seeing how dependent on technology everyone is becoming. 

So I wrote this piece to express my concerns with the draw of technology; in it, the percussionist has been ensnared by ‘The Machine’ and can only create the metallic, rhythmic sounds that it likes - waggling the chains around the drum, and scraping a stick around its brass buttons. But the player has an independent, creative mind and rebels - adding accents to her patterns, and finally drumming freely on the skin. This seems to confuse The Machine, forcing it to listen to her new sounds - putting her in charge at long last. But The Machine is adaptable, and it starts to take hold of her new creations. It swallows them into its repertoire of sounds, warps them to fits its metallic preferences, and leaves her back where she started, but with a bit more of her self and soul lost to The Machine. Hence the title ‘Heuriskein’, the Greek word from which we got ‘heuristics’ - as both player and tape learn and discover new things during the piece.

This piece came about from a collaboration with RCM percussionist Kizzy Brooks, whose playing I recorded in order to simulate the live part on this recording.

Heuriskein

Live world premiere recording at the Thornham Summer Festival. Commissioned by the Thornham Summer Festival, performed by Adrien Bernege (clarinet in Bb), Fra Rustumji (violin), Corentin Chassard ('cello), Sam Cave (guitar), Bartosz Glowacki (accordion), Guillaume Mathias (piano) and the church bellringers of Thornham Magna. Conducted by Jon Hargreaves .

At the edge of his dreams... (2017)

This piece searches for purity of voice. It attempts to construct textures that are externally static yet internally active and fluid, and explores soundscapes that are essentially the same and at the same time intrinsically different.

With my thanks to Pietro Roffi and my admiration to Michele Bianco.

Performed by
Michele Bianco - accordion, Italy.

Recorded at the medical SPA “Eglės” sanatorija, Lithuania during the Composers+Summer Academy on 23 June 2018.

Recording produced by Dainius Kazilionis.

Recording sponsored by Lithuanian World Arts Council.

More info at www.composersplus.com

Sam Cave – …the space that lies between them… (for solo accordion)

Here the accordion and each instrument of the string quartet are considered as parts of a larger whole, a ‘super instrument’. Together they move through textures that weave, layer, join and transcend the individual parts of the ensemble. As the music rises and falls, halts, moves and changes perspective, it strives for point of distant yet intense fragility.

I am extremely grateful to Simas Tankevičius, Konrad Levicki, Ugnė Petrauskaitė, Ignė Pikalavičiūtė and Irina Serotyuk for their wonderful playing, and for bringing my music to life.

Performed by
Irina Serotyuk - accordion, Ukraine and string quartet:
Simas Tankevičius - violin, Lithuania
Konrad Levicki - violin, Lithuania
Ugnė Petrauskaitė - viola, Lithuania
Ignė Pikalavičiūtė - cello, Lithuania

Recorded at the medical SPA “Eglės” sanatorija, Lithuania during the Composers+Summer Academy on 23 June 2018.

Recording produced by Dainius Kazilionis.

Recording sponsored by Lithuanian World Arts Council.

More info at www.composersplus.com

Sam Cave – …to the same failing light… (for accordion and string quartet)

Studio recording of MAPINGUARI for solo accordion. The piece is inspired by the Brazilian legend of the Amazonian man-eating creature.

accordion, Kamila Olas
recorded by accordAkademija and ComposersPlus
published by accordAkademija

mapinguari, op.6b, for solo accordion (2018) / performed by Kamila Olas

Limited Noises is a work for guitar and Live electronics (Supercollider) in which the noise is in the limits of perception.

Limited Noises - for E-guitar and supercollider

Eternal Return

The Fidelio Trio
0'00" Shamal
4'50" Interference
Mouth
Idaho

This Is The Wind

We call the gigantic pile of plastic stuck in the middle of the pacific ocean as the plastic vortex. As well as other marine pollutions, plastic pollution shows its serious impacts on the marine ecosystem, especially on its creatures. You might see the videos of a sea turtle having a plastic straw removed from its nose and of the seagulls' guts being filled with the small pieces of plastics.

This piece, Synthetic Ocean is composed inspired by these videos and several documentaries regarding plastic ocean pollution, such as A Plastic Ocean and The Mermaids' Tears: Oceans Of Plastic. As these documentaries are showing the microplastics have made the ocean toxic, and how those are consumed by the marine creatures, so threatens their lives, the pieces as well is depicting the positioned (polluted) ocean, and the dead organism as well as the plastic vortex made by human and the pacific ocean current together.

The composer depicts the soundscape through the symbolic sounds which the composer selected based on the contents of the piece to fit the big and small themes of the music and builds the structure of the piece along with the shape of the vortex.

Synthetic Ocean- Composed By Sally Hyun, Performed By Dr. Heather Roche (2020)

Bischofsheim (Hessen) is a multicultural place. Last year, (I remember) I returned home after work, the streets of Bischofsheim were full of people, waiting for the great moment at 00:00 o´clock. Also, Bischofsheim has a mechanical garage for trains and the trains started to whistle as a loud choir. This year, only the echo of one person whistling on the street, some people seeing the firecrackers through a close window, the resonance on the walls in the empty space, suddenly 2 ladies appear on the street you can hear the voices. Only one train started to whistle. This was the first time that I could feel the space of Bischofsheim through the emptiness.

Bischofsheim, Hessen,Germany 01 01 2021, 00:00

Guitarist and Composer based in London. Graduate of the Royal College of Music London and currently Tutor in guitar at Brunel University London.

At the edge of his dreams... (2017)

SamCave

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