contemporary

A N O M I A (2023)

Premiered at Musis, Arnhem, 25.02.2023

Orkest de Ereprijs, conducted by Clark Rundell

“The concept of the work comes from the language specific disturbance where the main symptom is the inability of retrieving known words. The composition takes the form of an audiovisual essay, in music, images and words touching on what it means to have something at the tip of your tongue and are unable to express it.” ~words by Yannis Kyriakides

P L E N I T U D E (2019)

by Aspasia Nasopoulou

Greek Premiere at Sacred Music Festival, Greek National Opera, Athens, 14.04.2025

with Sibil•la Ensemble

बगलामुखी (Bagalāmukhi) {x | x⁴ – 5ⁿ = 0} (2025)

by Nirantar Yakthumba

Premiere at Splendor Amsterdam, 16.12.2024

with Alex Mastichiadis

This work originates from Nirantar’s explorations and analyses of the extraordinary range of tonal structures in the systems of North Indian ragas, Arabic maqamat, and the European quarter-comma meantone system. In Bagalāmukhi, Nirantar constructs a series of 42 tonalities in extended quarter-comma meantone that goes beyond traditional conventions of cultural practices around meantone tuning. If we think of meantone as an alphabet, what other languages can we speak with it?

In the process of finding these new ways of organizing musical practice, we experiment with making melodic fragments and ornamentations for each tonality that express how their tones are connected and how one may improvise within them. In order to perform this work, we must explore and learn these new tonalities at a deep level and make meaning with them in relation to our previous musical experiences.

HARD WORKING WOMAN (2011)

by Silvia Borzelli

Short video from the live performance Endless Journey at Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ (Amsterdam), a part of the NAPzak series by Nieuw Amsterdam Peil, 21.05.2024

A song inspired by and dedicated to three women. The first one is an unidentified woman from Cameroon, who we can hear singing accompanied by the rhythm of a stone on which she’s grinding the corn on a recording from 1964. This chant is connected to the blues song “Hard Working Woman” by Mississippi Matilda, an African American singer. The two chants connect and parallelize with the theme of hard work and despair for the future, the similar melodic contour, and the timbre of the two singers.

The subject of the text of the piece overlaps with the story of another Afro-American woman, Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta died in 1951, suffering from a serious form of cancer, and without her knowledge, her cells became a subject of research and study by the hospital in which she died. The HeLa cells [from (He(nrietta) La(cks)] turned out to be very special, as they can reproduce indefinitely. They are still sold for billions of dollars for the benefit of medical and scientific research, but not for the benefit of the family, who did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death.

NOW WE SEND YOU THIS MESSAGE (2021)

by Yannis Kyriakides

Premiered at Dom.Radio, Saint Petersburg, 18.11.2021

bass clarinet Georgy Mansurov, violin Eugeniy Subbotin , viola Irina Sopova, cello Olga Dyomina, double bass Carlos Navarro Herrero.

The source of this text is a letter written in 1426 by the Mamluk Sultanate Barsbay to King Janus, the Lusignan ruler of Cyprus. It represents the moment the Lusignan rule in Cyprus had come to an end, almost certainly due to their arrogance and hubris.

The Lusignan court had produced a treasure trove of Ars Subtilior music, the French-Cypriot Codex (MS. Torino J.II.9). Ballads from the manuscript are encoded into musical fragments, played by the string quartet while the text is sung in Greek.

S H E . . . N E N (2021)

by Andys Skordis

Premiered at Dom.Radio, Saint Petersburg, 18.11.2021

violin Eugeniy Subbotin , viola Irina Sopova, cello Olga Dyomina, double bass Carlos Navarro Herrero, gong Georgy Mansurov.

SHE…NEN (“Abyss” in Japanese) explores a rite of passages, from fragility into intensity and to a state of catharsis. The whole ritual resembles an erotic procedure that one enters and explores. Ends with a conclusion or a beginning of a new cycle.

LOTÓFAGOS I (2006)

by Beat Furrer

Performed at Dom.Radio, Saint Petersburg, 18.11.2021

double bass Carlos Navarro Herrero

“We were in a desert surrounded by our own image which we did not recognize. We had lost our memory.”

Lotófagos (Lotus eaters) alludes to the companions of Odysseus, who ate lotus in order to forget. The text by José Angel Valente set to music here is about lost memory […] Forgotten are thus sorrow, joy and the knowledge of death, that which first gives birth to the human conception of time. The desert is the place and the symbol of not remembering, an “other” state, which can be paraphrased in so many ways: as the alien, oblivion, nonbeing, death. ~words by Marie Luise Maintz

LĪMEN VI (2023)

by Tilen Lebar

Premiered at Musis, Arnhem, 25.02.2023

Orkest de Ereprijs, conducted by Clark Rundell

U N K N O W N (2021)

by Samir TimajChi

Premiere at Dom.Radio, Saint Petersburg, 18.11.2021

double bass Carlos Navarro Herrero

We already made so many identities’ masks to marginalize ourselves through history. These borders are killing the empathetic and sympathetic feelings with which we somehow see humans. They are drowning, wailing for the last hope, and waiting for someone to offer a hand. In the very slow tempo that shows the strong gravity of last moment’s life, the bombards of sounds grab into so many temporary and unstable materials for saving a life. ~words by Samir TimajChi