this thing that will not incinerate

                                                                                                           photo: Julio Kohl

Earth, residue of burning. Foundation for feet, plants and houses, tracing its origin in everything that resists in being purified by the violence of fire. It feels necessary that one pays attention to this thing whose nature is not to incinerate, this thing that stubbornly persists. A choice not subjected to reasoning or consciousness, entangled as it is in the very limits of matter itself, and makes it surrender less than entirely, held back by a peculiar mineral inertia.
 

As I was invited to write resto do incêndio (2013) for the exceptional Epifania Piano Trio (Alberto Kanji on violoncello, Felipe Scagliusi on piano and Simona Cavuoto on violin), I immediately thought of 2012 as the year of the dragon it turned out to be, overthrowing its igneous rage over São Paulo's favelas in uncomfortable consonance with portions of land coveted by capitalist speculation. Even though one may infer reminiscences of ancestral icons of fertility in concrete phalluses, this kind do not celebrate collective life drives, being otherwise sterile blockages to the fluidness of horizontal relationships that could possibly exist in the former agglomerations of precarious housings, now burnt down to ashes. Buildings shaped by the brute logic of exclusion, totems that symbolize terror instead of love toward neighbours (thrown into distance by the walls of city bunkers, euphemistically designated 'high standard homes' by the marketing jargon).

Departing from the absurd idea of finding  processual and formal correlates to this dense imagery, I desired a non-narrative dialectics based on the elements fire and earth and their particular ways of acting, building tension from gestural outbursts and prolongated permanences. That's how I got interested in the idea of formal accidents (unforeseen by perception, though premeditated in structure). So I had section durations, their subdivisions and densities moulded by the cold indifference of electronic chance operations. Arbitrarinesses and incongruences found were allowed to operate on an organic, progressive and linear harmonic development (based on the two-dimensional evolving of a single intervallic cycle). From this point on craftsmanship was free to encounter its own path, revealing itself both in rarefied textures and intricate polyphonies.

A beautiful première of resto do incêndio took place December 5th 2013 by the careful hands of Epifania Piano Trio, during the Música Estranha! festival. February 2014 the album 3+2/SP will be officialy released, featuring pieces by talented composers Marcus Siqueira, Mauício de Bonis, Rodrigo Lima and Thiago Cury. So be prepared for a beautiful release concert soon!