Transcription for saxophones of the hauntingly beautiful Hwit, composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto and originally performed on strings. The piece belongs to the album Out of Noise, from 2009.

https://www.discogs.com/master/163375-Ryuichi-Sakamoto-Out-Of-Noise

Discover and support Ryuichi Sakamoto and his music: https://www.sitesakamoto.com/ 

Arrangement, performance and recording by Joan Jordi Oliver.

Sakamoto - Hwit

Readings on Des Prés is a concert piece intended for live performance. Watch a beautiful video documentation here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rtznu7KoUg

Written in spring and summer of 2022, ‘Readings on Des Prés’ is a work for saxophone quartet, synthesizers and live electronics. The piece takes one of Josquin Des Prés’s most celebrated works 'Miserere mei Deus' as the starting point for an expansive sonic journey, where musical motives from the original material are extracted and transfigured into new sonic sculptures. Des Prés’s music, representative of the Renaissance period, is here examined and manipulated, chopped, copied and pasted, granulated and looped, until sound becomes a plastic material that can be melted and remoulded into a different entity. The material qualities of the voice are substituted by the breathy tones of the saxophone quartet and the characteristic language of the synthesizers. This combination, enhanced by digital and analogue transformations in real time, creates an ambiguous, rich sonic territory that is explored extensively from different perspectives through various sections of the piece. The result of these explorations is a series of liquid sculptures, vocal gestures frozen in time, lost words converted to...  more

released September 6, 2022

Performed by Z-Quartett:

Grace Juliet Macdonald, soprano saxophone
Petra Eszter Tóth, alto saxophone
Rob Burton, tenor saxophone
Christian Kunz, baritone saxophone

and Joan Jordi Oliver on synthesizers and live electronics

Recording, mixing and mastering by Dominykas Girçius

Readings on Des Prés - Part 3

Readings on Des Prés - Part 2

Readings on Des Prés - Part 1

Readings on Des Prés - Introduction

‘Línies’ is a 45-minute live set for solo saxophone, synthesizers and live electronics written and performed by Swiss-based musician Joan Jordi Oliver. This music is a continuation of his permanent obsession with the exploration of a sound world in between acoustic gesture and electronic processing, a fruitful path of endless possibilities that has defined most of his work during the past years. ‘Línies’ further researches electroacoustic techniques like unconventional amplification, multiple transformation effects or live looping, sometimes to extremes where the identity of the saxophone melts into a hybrid instrument with its own musical vocabulary. However, Joan abandons here a gestural component that was essential in previous works. ‘Línies’ is anti-climatic and anti-virtuosistic in the traditional sense. The musical interests shift here towards the creation in real time of atmospheric passages, expansive landscapes of sound and slowly evolving drones. Individual gesture loses importance and melts into this electroacoustic soundscape, where the organic, breathy sounds of the saxophone get confused with the sounds of the synthesizers, equally present and prominent. 

The musical language of ‘Línies’ progressively abandons the visceral character of previous experiments and draws its influences from the sound worlds of electronic ambient and drone music. Presence and gesture confront quietness and atmosphere, resulting in a very individual approach towards a musical practice that rejects stylistic borders.

Línies (2023), first track

Translations is a one-hour collection of pieces for seven instruments and live electronics, composed by Joan Jordi Oliver for Ensemble TaG Neue Musik Winterthur. The music of Translations follows the unique trajectory and production approach of the composer, moving back and forth to build bridges between academic high culture and underground sound practices. It rejects rigid stylistic boundaries and finds its personal expression somewhere between contemporary music, ambient production, film music, and electronic minimalism.

The pieces of Translations create incomplete, fragmentary soundscapes through the dynamic interplay of acoustic and electronic sounds. The sound of the instruments is enhanced and expanded through electronic processing, augmenting the palette provided by the musicians and creating ambivalent dialogues in which real-time gestures and pre-recorded elements merge into new hybrid forms. Sound is manipulated like a malleable material, constantly reshaped and redefined. The instrumentation and arrangement of the musical material are approached as if the ensemble were the translation of a DAW session. The musicians negotiate their individual expression with materials conceived like digital files: mechanical repetitions, unstable or static drones, and continuous transformations shape the narrative of the pieces.

The resulting sound world is a constant attempt at translation between these different musical languages, embracing imperfection, contradictions, and serendipitous discoveries, and draws more inspiration from techniques of electronic music production than from traditional instrumental composition. 

released November 26, 2024

Composed by Joan Jordi Oliver, 2023 and 2024

Performed by Ensemble TaG:

Nuriia Khasenova, flute
Antony Burkhard, bass clarinet
Ísak Ríkharðsson, violin
David Schnee, viola
Alex Jellici, cello
Rafael Rütti, piano
Martin Flüge, percussion
Joan Jordi Oliver, live electronics

Sound engineering and live recording: Leandro Gianini
Mixing and mastering: Joan Jordi Oliver

Artwork and Design: LOID
www.instagram.com/loid0001/
Photography: Hikari

Translations - V

Translations - IV

Translations - III

Translations - II

Translations - I

Released on Florina Cassettes. Listen to the full album here: florinacassettes.bandcamp.com/album/sempre-encara

In his third release, Joan Jordi Oliver persists in the medium of electronic production and the promise of the endless digital canvas as means for sonic transformation. Playful improvisations and a rich palette of acoustic sources - from instrumental sounds to intimate field recordings - are treated with delicate electronic manipulation, rendering discreet gestures into expansive soundscapes in a process of patient transfiguration.

The dense fog of electronic processing obscures the original sound sources. It is however paired with more transparent structures, plain harmonic progressions and recurring melodic motives. They weave together, constantly moving back and forth between familiarity and ambiguity, gently guiding the listener through a journey of isolated musical moments.

The music of "Sempre Encara" (’still, always’) reflects on notions of permanence, decay and the persistency of memory. The nostalgic character of the musical material, coupled with colourful sound manipulation, attempts to imagine music as a distant memory or as an echo within a dream. Melancholic motifs, whispering melodies and contemplative drones evoke a sense of longing for a time or place that remains elusive, suspended between reality and idealization.

released December 6, 2024

Written and produced by Joan Jordi Oliver, Summer 2023 & 2024
Instrumental lines performed by Ensemble TaG Winterthur
Mastering by James Edward Armstrong
Design by Anne-Julie Dudemaine
Photos by Pier-Luc Tremblay
Original painting "Rinaldo and the Nymphs" by Gianantonio Guardi and Francesco Guardi (Oil on canvas, about 1745-1755)

Released on Florina Cassettes

Fulles

In this work, a minimal and transparent approach to electronic processing of the instrumental line results in a flexible environment where the performer can explore several modes of interaction between acoustic and electronic sounds. The sound world of Double is limited to a reduced set of gestural elements and idiomatic sounds on the double bass, which are captured and processed within a partly generative electronic system.

Shaped directly and entirely by the performer’s playing, the electronics generate layered canons, glitch-like loops, and reversed gestures that mirror and distort the instrumental line. A great degree of flexibility provided in the score, centering around expansive choreographic gestures and subtle timbral transformations across both structured passages and improvisational moments, results in an ever-shifting sonic environment that is extremely sensitive to the performer’s choices and demands as much attentive listening as expressive playing.

Performed live by Aleksander Gabryś
February 26th, 2025
Zürich 

Recorded by Leandro Gianini, Quirin S. Oeschger and Marin Wolf
Mixed by Joan Jordi Oliver 

Photography by Paul Taro Schmidt

Double (2024), for double bass and live electronics

Composer, saxophonist and producer. His work merges acoustic sources and live instrumentation with electronic manipulation, rejecting stylistic constraints and craving its own identity somewhere at the intersection of ambient, minimalism, free improvisation, contemporary classical music and experimental electronica.

Joan Jordi Oliver

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