Monday, March 20, 2017

_gestuário





The _gestuário project unites dancer Maíra Alves, composer Rodolfo Valente and cellist William Teixeira in a recital for cello, electronic sounds and dance, shaped around two areas in which gestuality emerges as a crucial area for research: mixed electronic music (which combines acoustic instruments and electronic sounds) and contemporary dance. Premièred in october 2016 at estúdiofitacrepe-sp, this project visits a repertoire built out of collaborations among its components and other composers active in the contemporary music scene in Brasil, like Eduardo Frigatti, Felipe de Almeida Ribeiro, Felipe Merker Castellani, Danilo Rossetti. Beyond operating electronic sounds in all pieces, I also do my contibution to the repertoire with estudo sobre materiais resistentes nº1 (or "study on resistant materials nr. 1").

 
In this study, I interfered both in written and electronic form in the more than well known Suite Nr. 2 in D minor BWV 1008 by J. S. Bach. The above recording contains only the first movement, which I had "rewritten" in 2011 intended as part of a feature film by movie maker Alexandre Charro. The departure in my interferences was a diagonal line drawn on the score pege, from the upper right cornet to the inferior left corner. What stood on the left of this line was kept intact, but everything on the right was erased and completeli reelaborated from scratch, seeking a looser rhythmic, different sound emmissions (harmonics, pizzicati, etc.) and a certain harmonic strangeness. As if we were abandoning a familiar soundworld, which step by step, vanishes into a completely different sound texture, emphasized by an electronic multiplicaction of those sounds, whis is increasingly present.

This score was shown cellist William Teixeira and, as a result of our conversation, in 2016 I "rewrote" the other five movements from the original suite (allemande, courante, sarabande, menuett, gigue), each with a different kind of intervention. Until this moment, this piece has been performed twice, one in Curitiba, another in São Paulo (already incorporated to the _gestuário procect). We look forward to new performances soon and, hopefully, also a full recording of all the compositions.