Suchness for Horn and Live Electronics

"all appearances lack in essence and all names arise from that which is nowhere" - Wen I

Beyond the poetic dimension and conception of Suchness (which I'd be happy to elaborate on privately), I'd like to mention that it's a small tribute to my time in Montreal and the hidden tales that rest in some of the sacred places I discovered here.

Performance - Gabriel Trottier and myself on horn. 
Art cover and creative collaboration - Joel Karim
Equipment and technical support - Richard McKenzie
Additional recordings used - NASA Voyager

Inspiration - Jupiter's electromagnetic field, Reflection on a Viking Prow (Middleton), the Buddhist concept of Tathātā, among many many other things and beings.

And...I especially want to thank Takuto Fukuda, who was deeply committed to helping me throughout the process.

Suchness [2022]

Unfold AG

Studies for portraits in surroundings (with J.L.G. & P.B.)

The Oboe-Solo is put into a setting of everyday-live-sounds, documentary sounds that function as the surrounding of the Oboe. The Oboe itself is a study of the potential of transformations of sensations that we all humans share. These sensations are transferred into sound-characteristics, sound-tactilities, gestures of idiomatic Oboe-sounds. 
As we are influenced by our environment and by living, we are influencing our environment the two instruments are in a fluent interaction. The Oboe is inscribing it’s sound-spectra into the documentary-sounds of the keyboard, the keyboard itself filtering these sounds according to the Oboe and expanding these qualities, and the result of this inscribes itself into the Oboe spectrum. This is done by a live electronic set-up that builds this ongoing interactive process. And the chamber music aspect is then increased by the development of a polyphonic interaction between Oboe-lines and surrounding structures, that are increasingly living a polyphonic live, that transforms necessarily the electronic part again. 
The framing of the material is at the same time a homage to two important art-works (even if one is a sociological/philosophical book I admire it as a work of art), the one from Jean-Luc Godard (masculine – feminine) and the other from Pierre Bourdieu (Manet).

Studies for portraits in surroundings (with J.L.G. & P.B.)

Composée pour le concert Masse 2022: In Quest of Spirit présenté par Codes d'Accès, Interpolation est une interlude mêlant sonorités instrumentales, voix et électroniques, inspirée par une réflexion sur la spiritualité.  

Musique utilisée: The Hills Are Crying de Clarissa Connelly

Interpolation

Ballad of Forgotten Hour (2016)
for Violin, Accordion and Soprano
for NAMES Ensemble

Ballad Of Forgotten Hour (2016)-Ashkan Behzadi

Making of – intimacy beschäftigt sich mit der Normierung der intimen Erfahrung, lässt sie als Klangformen in ihrer Vorgeformtheit und Schablonisierung durchsichtig werden. Zugleich arbeitet das Stück an der Spezifikation der Klangformen und -strukturen durch kompositorische Transformationen und unternimmt den Versuch, die normierten Empfindungen, die mit den überkommenen und zumeist ungefragt übernommenen Klanggestalten einhergehen, aufzulösen und durch eine gehobene, ins „genau-Jetzt-so-seiende“ Präsenz zu überführen.
Thematisiert werden die in klangliche Erscheinungen transformierten Erfahrungen unseres intimen Erlebens, Erfahrungen, die wir alle kennen, die jede und jeder von uns für sich selbst als „die Besonderen“ erlebt haben wird. Deren Formen und Erleben sind aber kulturell geprägt. Unsere Wahrnehmung und unser Erleben sind geprägt durch die Welt, in der wir leben: Wir lernen zu hören und das Gehörte entsprechend den geltenden Konventionen zu erleben. Die kompositorische Arbeit an der Vorgeformtheit unseres Erlebens bietet die Möglichkeit, eine einzigartige, unwiederbringliche intime Klang-Erfahrung zu kreieren. Klang-Erfahrungen, die sich einer Schubladisierung verweigern und sich nicht sofort einordnen lassen; deren Erfahrung uns selbst wiederum intim werden lässt, indem wir „nackt“ vor ihnen sind und sie als solche hören.
Als eine kompositorisch grundlegend veränderte Form des Erlebens von (ehemals vorgefertigten) Klang- und Erlebnisschablonen, in und durch grundlegend veränderte Kontextualisierungen kann dann die Erfahrung diese Klangstrukturen spezifisch und einzigartig werden lassen. Dieser Organismus, der durch das Stück, die Musiker*innen, die Zuhörer*innen und den Raum gebildet werden wird, lässt – so die Intention – die Grenzen des Erlebens durchlässig(er) werden und ermöglicht hoffentlich Erfahrungen jenseits der Norm.

Making Of – Intimacy

for 12 musicians
Commission of Ensemble Éclat
Live recording of the World Premiere (26/01/2024), performed by Ensemble Éclat, conducted by Charles-Eric Fontaine
I - L'attente
II - Le jeu
III - Les noces

Au Bord De La Nuit (11/2023)

For flute, clarinet, trombone, electric guitar, percussion, keyboard, violin and cello.
Live recording at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center for the IntAct 2023 festival, in December 2023.
Tacet(i) Ensemble
Pisol Manatchinapisit, conductor
Patumwan Piensub, flute
Christhatai Paksamai, clarinet
Siravith Kongbandalsuk, trombone
Noppakorn Auesirinucroch, electric guitar
Kerksakul Jaree, keyboard
Kantapong Rakbankerd, percussion
Saksilpa Srisukson, violin
Kantika Comenaphatt, cello

Flou, flash, lucide (2022)

Live recording (stereo downmix) from live@CIRMMT in December 2024.

Antonin Bourgault, tenor saxophone
Audréanne Filion, violoncello

Mixing and mastering:
Yulin Yan

Cover picture © Manuel Mathieu

Studies for the Second Womb | live@CIRMMT_v2024 | excerpt-4

"Regnum Lapideum" (2016)

for seven musicians and electromechanical devices

Live Recording
Paris, Auditorium Marcel Landowki
April 29th 2016

Ensemble 2e2m
Pierre Roullier

Mauro Lanza / Andrea Valle - "Regnum Lapideum" (2016)

for string quartet and electronics

Paris, Centre Pompidou June 7th 2017
Quatuor Diotima

**********************

As a kid we had a television set with an antenna that rotated (you could rotate it from inside of your house). When the major channels would go off-air you could rotate it and pick up strange other channels from smaller cities around - from across the border, Buffalo and so on - and you would see strange things, that were kind of hard to see (there was a lot of static) and it was very intriguing to watch that kind of things. That was really the core, the crystal at the centre of this movie: my experience with that thinking “what if the images that you pulled up were really quite extreme, disturbing, possibly illegal, and what would you think then, would you keep seeking out those channels or would you call the police or what would you do, how would you respond to them?”

David Cronenberg on his movie Videodrome (commentary track of the Criterion Collection BlueRay)

The Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion was a television signal hijacking (probably the most famous and certainly the longest signal hijacking ever) that occurred in Chicago, Illinois, United States on the evening of November 22, 1987. The signal pirates, whose identities were never found, succeeded in getting their broadcast intruded onto WTTW (a local Public Broadcasting Service television station).
The pirate broadcast, which lasted 90 endless seconds, featured an individual disguised as Max Headroom (a sci-fi computer-generated television character quite popular in the 80s, coming from dystopian near-future dominated by television and large corporations).
Around 11:15 p.m. an episode of the British TV-Series Doctor Who was suddenly interrupted by television static, after which an unidentified man wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses appeared. The man started to moan, scream and laugh, uttering various random phrases (the audio was distorted and crackling), including New Coke's advertising slogan "Catch the Wave" while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesperson at the time). He then tossed the can out of sight, presented his middle finger wearing a rubber extension, sang an excerpt of “I’m losing you” (a 1966 Motown hit recorded by the Temptations), hummed the theme song of Clutch Cargo (a clumsily-animated television series of the 60s), moaned painfully complaining about his piles, farted, put on and off a giant glove (similar to the one worn by Michael Jackson at the time). He then partially exposed his buttocks, howling: "They're coming to get me!”, while an unidentified female accomplice wearing a French maid outfit started to spank him with a flyswatter. The transmission then blacked out for a few seconds before resuming the Doctor Who episode in progress.

“The 1987 Max Headroom Broadcast Incident” features a string quartet “enhanced” with transducers and preparations. 
The digital processing of the instruments is largely inspired by the same modulation techniques that were - and still are - commonly used for radio and television transmission. 
The piece, an hommage to obsolete or soon-to-be deprecated technologies and to the media-dominated, dark future that the “cyberpunk” sci-fi of 80s foretold, is dedicated to the memory of Fausto Romitelli.