these are rehearsal recordings from band camp in March 2021

Magpie/The Mamm

Performed by Xenia Pestova (piano) and Carla Rees (bass flute) during Cheltenham Music Festival. 
Concert at Chapel Arts, Cheltenham, 15/07/2018 

Please note, during this showcase, the electronics were live in this performance/recording. Future performances will be using fixed/triggered electronics.

I n t o   T h e   B l a n k   E x p a n s e   O f   S p a c e

O Horizonte de uma Borboleta (2014)
for flute, violin and piano

Composed by Hugo Vasco Reis

Performed by
David Silva | Flute
Francisco Henriques | Violin
Cândido Fernandes | Piano

Cover by Yari Ostovani

Supported by
Ministry of Culture of Portugal, Antena 2 (portuguese classical radio) and Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa

Program Note
The reflection of this work is about the metaphor for demand. The persistence in achieving the unknown and undefined, through successive metamorphoses. At the same time is an antipode of something distant, eternal and mysterious (the horizon), with something fragile, short lived and with an unique range (the butterfly). The butterfly symbolizes the ephemeral, with birth and death inserted in a short timeline. Afterwards “the horizon” is too wide to remember a small spot...

Nota de Programa
A reflexão desta peça é sobre a metáfora da procura. A persistência em alcançar o desconhecido e o indefinido, através de sucessivas metamorfoses. Ao mesmo tempo é uma antípoda entre algo longínquo, eterno e misterioso (o horizonte), com algo frágil, de curta duração e de alcance singular (a borboleta). A “borboleta“ simboliza a efemeridade, sendo o seu nascimento e morte inseridos num curto espaço de tempo. Depois, “o horizonte” é demasiado grande para recordar um pequeno ponto...

www.hugovascoreis.com

Chamber Music I

O Horizonte de uma Borboleta (Flute, Violin and Piano)

Shades of Rain for piano trio (2018-19)
Shades of Rain has been written for the Prism piano trio as a commission for the Illuminate Women's
Music 2019 Season I US-UK touring concert series. The piece explores the imagery and textures of different types of rain. The piece functions as though it is two movements happening within the same
piece: Cloudburst and Petrichor. Cloudburst refers to an extreme amount of precipitation in a short period of time often accompanied by hail and thunderstorms. The piece reflects this with dramatic
driving rhythms and strident dramatic chords from the piano. These spells of extreme dramatic rain and musical descents are interrupted by music representing Petrichor. 'Petrichor' is the pleasant aroma
that occurs after rain has fallen for the first time after a dry period. These parts of the music are explored through expansive and reflective lyrical lines giving relief to the dramatic movements and
figures found in the Cloudburst sections
The Illuminate Women's Music 2019 Season I concert series and commissions is supported by the
PRS Open Fund for organisations.
Angela Elizabeth Slater

Biography
Angela Elizabeth Slater is a UK-based composer, Illuminate Women’s Music Director and Professor of Composition at LPMAM. She has an interest in musically mapping different aspects of the natural world into the fabric of her music.
Recent significant achievements include being selected for the RPS Composer programme for 2021-22, 2020-22 Tanglewood Composition Fellow, and a 2017-18 Britten-Pears Young Artist through which Angela worked with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Michael Gandolfi, developing Soaring in Stasis which received its premiere at 2018 Aldeburgh Festival. Her work Eye o da hurricane (for string quartet), was shortlisted in the British category ISCM world music days in 2017. Angela was the New England Philharmonic’s 2018 call for scores winner resulting in the world-premiere of her orchestral work Roil in Stillness in April 2019. Angela also became the 2018 Young Composer of the Year for the London Firebird Orchestra, leading to a new work, Twilight Inversions, which received its world- premiere on 11th June 2019. Angela was the 2019 Mendelssohn Scholar resulting in her furthering her studies with Michael Gandolfi at NEC in 2019.
In 2019 Angela had further exciting performances including New-York based Hildegard National Sawdust ensemble performing Shades of Rain for piano trio, followed by a world-premiere of her work
Of Spheres by the Semiosis quartet as part of the IAWM conference at Berklee College of Music (Boston). Angela has also recently attended the prestigious Choreographer-Composer Lab at Phoenix Dance Theatre with the intention of furthering her artistic ambition and collaborative practices with other artforms. In 2021 she wrote a new work called Beyond Yourself for Orkest de erepri as part of Young Composer’s Meeting in Apeldoorn, two new works for Royal Scottish National Orchestra, alongside six new solo works for the Connected skies project funded by Arts Council England. Across summer 2021 she written new works and had performances at JAM, SCBA, INMF and Fresh Squeezed Opera.
Looking forward to Autumn 21 and 2022 Angela is looking forward to the performance of her piano concerto Tautening skies supported by PRSF. She will also be developing a new accordion concerto working with accordionist Kamila Olas through Arts Council England’s DYCP fund, and composing new works for the RPS Composers programme and LPO Young Composers scheme.
For more information please visit: https://angelaslatercomposer.co.uk

Shades of Rain by Angela Elizabeth Slater

[for 'cello and electronics]

The first time I saw the ‘cello played was in a tiny classroom with twenty other peo- ple crammed, in the heat of early Autumn in Adelaide, in a tight formation around Janis Laurs. He played the first bach suite, sang along with the internal counter- point, swayed back ++ forth ++ left ++ right in his chair. For you pushes the mem- ory of how those open and stopped strings hung in the hot, dry air through effects pedals, feeds it back on itself, blows it out of proportion... it’s minimal maximal self indulgent and heavy metal and Janis Laurs swaying back and forth in that creak- ing chair in the heat; it’s the echo of the human voice we hear in those strings, volume turned up to eleven.


For you, I Sing in Colours.

Illuminate Season I with Ethel Smyth trio at Late Music York on 7th September 2019

Etching Circles by Sarah Westwood (Illuminate commission)

Sarah Westwood (b.1989): Etching Circles (2019) for piano trio
The idea for the piece came after composing for dance collective Eleven Farrer House, on the project Circle of Perpetuating Choirs and is a memory of working with them. The four dancer’s had solos within the dance, and so I decided to make four miniature movements based on each dancer’s energy and movements. The audience was placed in the middle of the space, with the dancer’s moving around them. Each dancer went at a different pace to one another and at times came together.
© Sarah Westwood 2019

Etching Circles by Sarah Westwood

Illuminate Season I with Ethel Smyth trio at Late Music York on 7th September:

Confluere by Laura Shipsey (Illuminate commission)

Laura Shipsey (b.1992): Confluere (2019) for piano trio 
The word ‘confluere’ is the Latin root of the English ‘confluence’ meaning the place where two rivers flow together and become one; a meeting point. My piano trio is a kind of musical confluence drawing together two harmonic worlds and hinting at a third. Register, rhythmic layering and harmonic rotation techniques were all important in the construction of the piece but primarily it is the constantly changing relationship between the three players which provides the form. As with much of my recent work, the sonic world of Confluere focusses on line, flow, and clarity of character.
© Laura Shipsey 2019

Laura Shipsey Confluence For Piano Trio

Illuminate Season I with Ethel Smyth trio at Late Music York on 7th September 2019

Blair Boyd (b.1990): Undercurrent (2019) for piano trio (illuminate commission)

The largely atmospheric opening of Undercurrent comprises of dovetailed expressive lines in the violin and cello underpinned by muddled chords in the piano’s lower register. In the faster central section of the piece, the dense piano chords evolve into secco rhythmic pulsations which provide a mechanical-like current for the dialogue between the violin and cello pair. The final section of the piece is a return to the atmospheric opening as the original piano chords repeat in a pattern at a differing rate in each instrument, which is slowly augmented until the individual streams converge.
© Blair Boyd 2019

Blair Boyd Undercurrent

Rizoma (2018)
for violin, cello and piano

Composed by Hugo Vasco Reis
Performed by Luís Pacheco Cunha, Catherine Strynckx and Jill Lawson

Cover by Yari Ostovani

Supported by
Ministry of Culture of Portugal, Antena 2 (portuguese classical radio) and Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa

Program Note 
The reflection for the creation of this work, follows the descriptive model of rhizome proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In this model (as I imagined the formalization, realization and result of this work), the rhizome proliferates without hierarchy, in a multiplicity of lines that bind in infinite ways, always in the same horizontal plane. Its structure of labyrinthine passages, without beginning or end, without center or periphery, continues. It dives into a random and constantly changing system. An unpredictable meeting space, dedicated to carrying out multiple exchange processes in its environment. Its elements, always autonomous, remain focused on finding new beginnings, mobility and multiplicity of lines in all directions. "The question is to produce unconsciousness and with it new statements, other desires: the rhizome is this production of unconsciousness." (Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus)

Nota de Programa 
A reflexão para a criação desta peça, atende ao modelo descritivo de rizoma proposto por Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari. Nesse modelo (tal como imaginei a formalização, realização e resultado desta peça), o rizoma prolifera sem hierarquia, numa multiplicidade de linhas que se ligam de maneiras infinitas, sempre no mesmo plano horizontal. A sua estrutura de passagens labirínticas, sem princípio nem fim, sem centro nem periferia, continua. Mergulha num sistema aleatório e em constante variação. Um espaço de encontros imprevisíveis, dedicado a realizar múltiplos processos de troca no seu ambiente. Os seus elementos, sempre autónomos, continuam focados em encontrar novos começos, mobilidade e multiplicidade de linhas em todas as direções. “A questão é produzir inconsciência e, com ela, novos enunciados, outros desejos: o rizoma é esta produção de inconsciente mesmo.” (Deleuze & Guattari, Mil Platôs I)

www.hugovascoreis.com

Rizoma - Hugo Vasco Reis

The text of this song for soprano and piano has been taken from Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866) by Victor Hugo: in this book, Hugo uses the Guernésiais word for Octopus—pieuvre—rather than the French (poulpe). Beyond his use of regional  language, Hugo’s evocative descriptive language is also interesting: his Octopus is threatening, vain, stunning and seemingly extra-terrestrial. In this setting of an English translation, the soprano inhabits a story-telling mode, with the piano taking a subservient, illustrative role. This sung octopus is elusive and experienced second-hand, by its traces in the water, yet never quite grasped or captured. (Lauren Redhead, 2018)

the octopus was written for Rebecca Hardwick—to whom it is also dedicated—for Borough New Music.
This recording is of her premiere of the piece on 26 February 2019.

the octopus

A Weightlessness Process (or how to become ethereal), for solo cello (2019).
Excerpt from a preliminary version of the piece in a reading session. Performed by Séverine Ballon during a workshop at the University of Leeds, 2019.

Buy score: https://www.babelscores.com/catalogs/instrumental/5468-a-weightlessness-process

You can read more about the piece on my website: https://micheleabondano.com/2020/04/10/a-weightlessness-process-or-how-to-become-ethereal/
Watch my video presentation on the research for this composition at the 56th RMA Annual Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Z4MUQAxKM

I n t o T h e B l a n k E x p a n s e O f S p a c e

Sarah Westwood

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