Spatial Audio Week: Concert 3
Wednesday 29 November 2023, Musiikkitalo, Black Box
Programme
The imaginary piano & Acousmatica
Aivot (2023) – Lumi Mannermaa
Inoltre (2017) – Javier Torres Maldonado
***volution (2023) – Johanes Timothy
Tombeau de Messiaen (1994) – Jonathan Harvey
Point of instability (2023) – Riccardo Tesorini
Spinal chord (2023) – Saku Liimatainen
Tensión tranquila II (2023) – Javier Torres Maldonado
Macadamia Variations (2023) – Jekaterina Viltšenko
Program notes
The imaginary piano & Acousmatica
Candida Felici – piano
Javier Torres Maldonado – electronics
Aivot (2023) – Lumi Mannermaa
8 channels acousmatic composition
Aivot (Eng. Brain) is an 8-channel exploration in a hub of a head, meshing together dream, brain fog, lost and sliced thoughts, tinnitus, routine, interference and disconnection, and most importantly, the scattered pulp of constantly newborn ideas sprinting through neural transmitters. It consists of materials originated exclusively in analog sound synthesis, thus mimicking the streams of electrical activity that branches and spreads in our foremost neural network in every split of a second. If you could hear your brain functioning, what would it sound like?
Lumi Mannermaa (b. 1999) is studying in their first year bachelor’s in Sibelius Academy Music Technology department, specializing in electroacoustic and acousmatic composition and performance, as well as in experimental sound. In addition to the artistic studies, they study in University of Helsinki in the Faculty of Arts, majoring in Musicology. Formerly trained as a classical cellist, they are keen on investigating the limits of taste and humour in a free sonic-gestural domain, as well as the warmth and emotion of machine sound, aiming to deconstruct hierarchies between different emotion responses in making and experiencing art.
Inoltre (2017) – Javier Torres Maldonado
For piano and electronics – First performance in Finland
”Inoltre for Piano and Electronics” was partially composed in 2010 and later completed in 2017. Conceived as a study on condensing sound objects derived from different automatic orchestrations, the initial material originates from a fragment of a sample of a tam tam rubbed with a super-ball. This very sound object served as the foundation for two of my previous compositions: the radio drama ”Un Posible Día” (2011) for soprano, narrator, 10 instruments, and electronics, and ”Sidereus Nuncius” (2009) for three percussionists, dancers, and an interactive electro-acoustic system. Defining this sound object, which initially lasted only 0.144 seconds, was a lengthy yet fruitful process. Starting from this point, I derived a series of automatic orchestration solutions using Orchidée, a computer-assisted orchestration application developed at Ircam. These solutions immediately revealed the possibilities and limitations of this tool.
While these materials were inherently fascinating due to their origins in a genuine microcosm, they could not be used in their raw form in a composition for piano and electronics, or solo piano. Through a multidimensional consideration of these possibilities, I sought compositional solutions that would allow for their condensation, contraction, or expansion—both in terms of time and space—enabling them to be incorporated into both the piano and electronics parts while maintaining their connection to the original sonic object.
Candida Felici obtained diplomas in piano (1990) and harpsichord (1995) and a degree in musicology “cum laude” (University of Rome, 1996). In 2003 she was awarded a Ph.D. (Summa Cum Laude) at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, for her thesis on Italian keyboard music in seventeenth-century Germany. In 2005 she won a scholarship for post-doctoral research at the University of Bologna. Since 2006 she has been lecturing in History of Music in several Italian Music Conservatories; she is now professor of Music History in the Conservatory of Milano. Her research focuses on post-World War II music and especially on issues of intertextuality, multiculturalism, relationship music-science-technology, spatialisation, electronics; she devotes also to early Baroque music and to 18th-century music, with special attention to migration of both music and musicians, relationship notation-performance-improvisation-ornamentation, imitative writing, German organ tablature, dissemination of Italian instrumental music in France, Giuseppe Tartini and his school, women composers. Since 1999 she is the pianist of the Dynamis Ensemble specialising in contemporary repertoire. She has premiered many new works and has a strong interest in works for piano and new technologies. She recorded two monographic CDs with the label Stradivarius dedicated respectively to Jonathan Harvey and Javier Torres Maldonado.
Javier Torres Maldonado (1968) is one of the most representative contemporary Mexican composers, he has received a series of international awards including the Commande d’État (State Commission) from the French Ministry of Culture (2007, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2020),Da Capo (Brandenburger Biennale, 2012), GRAME (Lyon, 2006), as well as other prestigious prizes including Queen Elisabeth (2004, Brussels), Alfredo Casella (2001), Queen ”Maria Jose” (Geneva, 2000), Mozart (Mozarteum, 1999 and 2001), Ad Referendum II (1997, Montreal), Prix des Musiciens (Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, 1998 ) Ibermusicas-Iberescena (2013). He was appointed to the Manuel de Falla Chair in 2015 (Spain) and in 2016 the Ensemble Klangforum in Vienna and the Siemens Foundation commissioned him Móvil, Cambiante (2017), for 14 instrumentalists. In 2018 the Mozarteum commissioned him High over the distant horizon, for 7 instrumentalists and electro-acoustic device for the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the Mozarteum Electronic Music Studio. The CD ÔM published by the French label Hortus, which includes his piece Ancienne chanson corse (lettera a mamma): un portrait imaginaire (2020), for twenty male voices divided into four groups in distributed in the space, recently received from Polyphonies (France) four golden diapasons and a special mention to the contemporary piece. He studied composition at the conservatories of Mexico and Milan (professors José Suárez, Sandro Gorli and Alessandro Solbiati) and completed advanced studies in composition with Franco Donatoni, Azio Corghi at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia (1999, Rome) and Chigiana Academy (Siena), as well as with Ivan Fedele at the Strasbourg Conservatory (honorable mention). He studied electroacoustic composition at Milan Conservatory (1999-2003) and IRCAM (Paris, 2003). He is Tenure Professor of electroacoustic composition at the Conservatoire of Milan, Italy.
***volution (2023) – Johanes Timothy
12 channels acousmatic composition
’Oh no! They are churning and rioting over!!!’
Originally from Jakarta, Indonesia, Johanes has been studying in various music institutes such as in Scotland, California, and Helsinki. Although most of his studies was undergone as a pianist, Johanes has various musical interest and experience ranging from performance, composition, music technology, up until education. He is also versed with the gamelan of his homeland.
Tombeau de Messiaen (1994) – Jonathan Harvey
For piano and electronics
This work is a modest offering in response to the death of a great musical and spiritual presence. Messiaen was a protospectralist, that is to say, he was fascinated by the colours of the harmonic series and its distortions, and found therein a prismatic play of light. The tape part of my work is composed of piano sounds entirely tuned to harmonic series – twelve of them, one for each class of pitch. The ‘tempered’ live piano joins and distorts these series, never entirely belonging, never entirely separate. Tombeau de Messiaen was written for Philip Mead (who commissioned it with funds provided in part by Eastern Arts) and dedicated to him and to Jake Harvey Tavener who was born ten hours before Tombeau was finished. Sound projection by the composer.
Point of instability (2023) – Riccardo Tesorini
Ambisonic acousmatic composition
Born out of a meeting with synth Serge at the Erkki studio of Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Point of Instability is a study in micro: microgestures, micro-rhythms, microsounds, and microvariations. A sonic portrait in black and white, a puntillistic flow in search of a purity of sound. The title has an autobiographical reminiscence and is related to the generating machine. Operating with a few patches, the slightest variation due to the shift of a potentiometer or one of the two joysticks can have dramatic effects on the sound. The goal is therefore to find a tiny point where the circuit is unstable and where anything can happen.
Riccardo Tesorini lives and works in Bologna, Italy. He studied Sound Engineering at the National Academy of Cinema in Bologna and earned a Master’s Degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He graduated from Conservatory ‘F. Morlacchi’ in Perugia specializing in ”Electronic Music and New Technologies”. He is attending a Master degree in Sound Design at the Conservatory “G.B Martini” in Bologna, currently he is on his exchanging period at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.
His work encompasses different activities, ranging from music for theatre and sound design to a electro-acoustic projects like”Eezu”or “Haou Nebout” as well as the realization of sound
installations and sound art. Always fascinated by the combination of music and images, he began his artistic career focusing on the different forms of sound space-time. Stylistically, his work is marked by an introspective vision coupled with a tireless inspiration towards nature, which is seen as an essential condition for harmony.
Spinal chord (2023) – Saku Liimatainen
Ambisonic acousmatic composition
Tensión tranquila II (2023) – Javier Torres Maldonado
For piano and electronics – First World performance
Tensión Tranquila II” is part of a cycle in which I aim to explore musical ideas and instrumental techniques that delve into the inner essence of gesture, simplifying and amplifying it, even on a spatial level. The title alludes to the resulting character of these actions on the source sound material.
Similar to the first piece in this series, ”Tensión Tranquila I” (2021) for oboe and electronics, ”Tensión Tranquila II” contains a concept not frequently found in my recent compositions. It does not rely on pre-existing ”natural” or ”artificial” sounds; rather, it arises from the exploration of one or several instrumental gestures that depend on the physicality of the performer’s actions on their instrument. In this context, space is used as an expansive and reactive surface, which may produce sounds of a different nature than those emanating from the piano.
Macadamia Variations (2023) – Jekaterina Viltšenko
12.1 channels acousmatic composition
”Macadamia Variations” is an exploration of simple, everyday sounds, recorded from year 2022 to 2023. The latest recorded sound was of macadamia nuts being dropped, then scattered over the wooden floor. It has become both an inspiration for the piece and the roadmap for the sound qualities the composition is built around: sharp, short, yet delicate in nature. When other sounds appear, they do not interfere with each other. Instead, in the ambisonic forest, they co-exist, they make space, and they dance.
Jekaterina Viltšenko is a first-year bachelor student at the Music Technology department (Creative Electronic Music Practices profile) of Sibelius Academy. Having previously composed for stage and performance projects in Helsinki and Tallinn, Jekaterina mainly uses musique concrète techniques in their work. Nowadays, their main interest lies in exploring sound gestures in an ambisonic environment.
Link to event details
Spatial Audio Week: Concert 3 in the Uniarts Helsinki event calendar