This is an original composition inspired on a folk Italian melody from Sardinia. It was awarded with the first prize in the “Scrivere in Jazz 2016” XIV Edition (Italy).

Images from Sardinia (Metamorphosis Ensemble)

Gaia Aloisi - Three clocks (2023) for large ensemble

Ensemble Novecento
Pasquale Corrado, conductor

Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Sala Sinopoli, Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone, Rome
October 2023

*****

Three clocks, which by definition mark time, crystallize as equally well-defined images: three brief representations of time but also of interior space, in a linearity that transforms into an instant, giving the listener the possibility of stopping and observing what world can be contained in a single moment.
The piece is thus divided into three movements, understood as subdivisions of the same musical and temporal discourse: the alternation between the glacial stasis and the explosions of sound of the first clock is followed by the melos of the second, which explicitly recalls vocal sounds in an atmosphere tonally nuanced, almost like a distant lament; the frenzy of the third, on the contrary, photographs and expands the obsessive excitement of a repetitive cycle of chaotic thoughts.
These are therefore three dilated snapshots, three moments that become narration. Each of them is framed and explored through its infinite ramifications, in an attempt to investigate the essential and fundamental dimension of our existence: time.

Three clocks | for large ensemble (2023)

Experimental student work, exploring expression outside the usual classical music style.


2. Knots

1. Pulse

3. Reflections

Commissioned and performed by Ensemble Modern, conducted by George Benjamin.

Bright Ring_

Gaia Aloisi is a composer from Cagliari, Sardinia (IT). After undertaking her first musical studies in her home town, she devoted herself both to voice and composition obtaining a Bachelor of Arts at the Haute École de Musique in Geneva (HEM) and a Master of Advanced Studies in Contemporary Music Performance and Interpretation at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana. She then obtained her Master’s Degree in Composition at the Conservatorio “G. Verdi” in Milan with Alessandro Solbiati and a High Specialisation Diploma at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Ivan Fedele. She is currently completing a Postgraduate Course with Clara Iannotta at the MDW – University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

As well as having been awarded in several international composition competitions, her original works have been commissioned and performed on the occasion of festivals and events and all around the world, including the Wettbewerb für zeitgenössische Musik in Zurich, LuganoMusica 2023 in Lugano, CEME 2022 by Meitar Ensemble in Tel Aviv, Festival Pontino di Musica in Sermoneta (IT), Mixtur Festival 2022 and Barcelona Modern Festival 2023 in Barcelona, Rondò Festival by Divertimento Ensemble in Milan, Festival SpazioMusica in Cagliari (IT), Migros Kulturprozent Music Competition (2020) in Zurich, Società del Quartetto di Milano, Festival 5 Giornate in Milan, Musikiin Aika in Viitasaari (FI), Festival Expresiones Contemporáneas in Morelia (MEX), Milano Piano City, Institut für zeitgenössische Musik (IzM) in Frankfurt, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Syntax Ensemble’s concert season in Milan and many others.

She has collaborated with various artists and ensembles of different nationalities, including Riot Ensemble, Mdi Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Divertimento Ensemble, Syntax Ensemble, AltreVoci Ensemble, Aulos Flute Ensemble, Spheres Ensemble, Ensemble Novecento of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Eccetera Saxophone Quartet, Amat Saxophone Quartet, Orchestra d’Archi Arrigoni, Marina Boselli, Lise Baudouin, Maria Grazia Bellocchio, Elio Marchesini, Nicolò Cafaro, Maria Eleonora Caminada, Marco Ignoti, Elisa Prosperi and many others. Her music has been lead by several conductors, and she has a solid collaboration with Pasquale Corrado. 

She has also received commissions from various institutions: in the 2023, her work “En corps, matière” for flute orchestra was commissioned by the Musik-Akademie in Basel and premiered in the prestigious Kulturkirche Paulus. In 2020, her work “Dialogues” for viola and cello was commissioned and premiered on the occasion of the École d'hiver internationale en médiation de la musique in Paris, in the concert hall of the Orchestre National d'Île-de-France. She has also collaborated with the Haute École de Musique in Geneva; since she is active in the research field, she was a research assistant at the latter institution in 2021.

She is currently working on an opera which will be premiered in 2024 at the Tete à Tete Opera Festival in London.

Her artistic creation ranges from the musical-theatrical field to pure sound creation, as well as the analysis of historical compositional techniques and musical means of the oral tradition.

Composer, music writer, performer from Dublin. Born in Russia, embraced the world.
On my everlasting musical journey

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