Contemporay Mixed Music

Recorded and/or mixed by Alexandre Chaigne

New Music-3

contemporain

Neue Musik

for string quartet and electronics
Commissioned by F. and J-P Billarant for the Wittener Tage Für Neue Kammermusik 2021.
Recorded by Ircam (Paris, Centre Pompidou), mixed by Music Unit.

First performance : April 23th 2021, Paris (FR)
Diotima quartet.

Des Mondes Possibles - string quartet & electronics (2021)

Chartres

for recordings of satellites, string quartet and electronics

Paris, Centre Pompidou April 18th 2021
Quatuor Diotima

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Achille Judica-Cordiglia and his brother Giovanni Battista are well-known amateur radio operators who claimed in the late fifties and early sixties to have heard radio communications taken from secret Soviet Union space missions, including SOS signals, telemetry, and the dying sounds (heartbeats and breathing) of a suffocating "lost cosmonaut.” Even though their claims have been thoroughly debunked, the stories of these sensational intercepts are part of the mythology of the Space Age and stand at the origin of a durable conspiracy theory.
In the 1960s, the idea of a “lost cosmonaut” spoke to acute fears. Despite the optimism of space exploration tales, the reality of space travel—from sending a dog into orbit to putting a man on the moon—had a striking effect on the public and raised more life-altering questions than it provided answers. A cosmonaut lost in space served as a poignant metaphor for individuals’ anxieties about the future in an era of nuclear tension and uncertainty. This helps to explain the diffusion and the longevity of a hoax that identified the stain of some kind of original sin on the shiny surface of the triumphs of the early space age. Now that the cosmos has switched in our imaginations from being the route toward a radiant future for humanity to a place of accumulation for space capitalism or a post-doomsday shelter for the extremely rich, these stories of dead astronauts are more sinister and haunting than ever.

The title "Memories of the Space Age" is borrowed from the collection of stories of the same name by J.G. Ballard (1988), a set of writings thematically linked around rotting launch gantries at Cape Canaveral, the failure of the US space program, dead astronauts eternally orbiting in space, deserted hotels lining the Florida coast, and the lonely, disturbed individuals who linger at the fringes of this lost dream of the Space Age.

The piece uses more than 100 historical radio recordings of human-made objects gravitating in Low Earth Orbit, for example, the beacon beeps of satellites, telemetries, and the voices of cosmonauts, along with the ill-famed Judica-Cordiglia tapes. This material—shifted and transposed to match the harmonic structure of the piece—is the starting point for an imitation game that involves the string quartet and that grows into a complex three-layered polyphony.

In addition to these archival materials, the electronic material features digital processing of the string instruments with the modulation techniques that were, and still are, commonly used for radio and television transmission. The fragile, inharmonic sonorities of the prepared strings are mirrored by electronic phenomena like feedbacks or physically-modeled chaotic circuits that behave in similarly erratic ways, in a laborious attempt to tame the untamable while at the same time pursuing serendipitous glitches.

"Memories of the Space Age" deals with the aesthetics of ground noise, white noise, and lost radio waves, with the misuse and malfunctions of technology, and with the misinterpretation of a chaotic signal as pareidolia. It is also, somehow, a nostalgic homage to obsolete or soon-to-be-obsolete technologies and to the visions of the future these technologies carried. That future now seems irretrievably lost, but its ghost, like Ballard’s dead astronauts, still haunts us.

Mauro Lanza - "Memories of the Space Age" (2020)

Trois Hymnes Primitifs (2008)

Polychromies 2 (2008)

Orchestre des Lauréats du CNSM de Paris,
Anne-Sophie Honoré, soprano
Patrick Davin, direction

Instants Mêlés (2014)

Karlheinz Essl's el-emen’ (for percussion and live electronics) presented by Dublin Sound Lab at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 22 October 2011 with Roger Moffatt (percussion) and Karlheinz Essl (electronics).

el emen

Jimmie Leblanc - ...and the flesh was made word.

Ramon Lazcano
Errobi 2, pour flûte basse, clarinette basse et piano
Emmanuelle Ophèle, flûte basse
Alain Billard, clarinette basse
Sébastien Vichard, piano

Enregistré en direct le 15.11.2016 par Radio France à la Cité de la musique-Philharmonie de Paris

Ramon Lazkano, Errobi 2

Mémorial,
pour deux chanteurs et ensemble,
Didier ROTELLA, compositeur,
Texte de Robert Desnos
Ensemble des élèves du CRR de Paris,
direction ; Jacques Saint-Yves

Album inconnu (05/02/2009 22:50:13)

Mémorial (2008)

FREC 3 (2016-2017)
pour flûte, violoncello, percussion, piano and live amplification.
Dur. 52:00
Commande de l'Auditori de Barcelona/Sampler Series 2015-16
Création : Agustí Fernández, piano. Almudena Vega, flûte. Miriam Fèlix, violoncello. Núria Andorrà, percussion. Ferran Conangla, amplification. Sampler Series/Auditori de Barcelona, Fundació Tàpies, 22.02.2017.
RECORDING : Ferran Conangla

FREC 3 (2016/17)- Fragment

composed by Dai Fujikura
text by Harry Ross
performed by Alice Teyssier (soprano)
The Rhythm Method:
Marina Kifferstein, Meaghan Burke, Anne Lanzilotti, Leah Asher
(permission from Alice Teyssier + The Rhythm Method)

Silence Seeking Solace for soprano and string quartet

Live recording of premiere by Anssi Karttunen, February 15, 2016 - Reid Hall, Paris FR.

Ainsi soit-il (2016) for solo cello

Laurent Sureau - 1ère Gymnopédie (E. Satie)

pour 5 voix solistes et ensemble,
création le 3 mai 2017 au Teatro Litta à Milan par les Neue VocalSolisten, l'ensemble Divertimento (Didier Rotella, piano), Sandro Gorli, direction

D'Un Soleil Arachnide (2017)

Hijaz Theme ; Voyage en mélancolie.

Recorded at La Licorne Rouge Rennes, 06/17.

Panart 1rst gen - Hijaz
Bellart Bells - Pygmy C
Echosound - G Elyxir

Hijaz Theme - Hang

Recorded live in Broceliande forest by Alexandre Chaigne, 06/17.
Val sans Retour.

Canopée - Outdoor Live Session 2017

Mari Visnapuu (piano),
Marianna Liik (live-electronics)

Kulgemine

INFERNO
for Choir, Orchestra, and Solo Performer

Gulbenkian Choir & Orchestra
conductor. Nuno Coelho
soloist. Andre Hencleeday

music. Nuno da Rocha
text. Clément Bondu

commissioned by OSESP - Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo & Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
premiere. 24th January 2020

audio & video. Gulbenkian Música | Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

INFERNO - for Choir, Orchestra, and Solo Performer

French composer. 
(He/They)
For more informations
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Des Mondes Possibles - string quartet & electronics (2021)

Sasha J. Blondeau