This project was made in partnership with the visual artist Teresa Swiedert, who invited me to make six sound pieces based on the words of Guarani farmers from the village Kalipety. The pieces became vinyl records, of which only one unit of each was made. However, you can listen to the digital version of the pieces on the project website (listen here). There you can find a lot of information about this very special project that the artist summarized like this
Substrato Guarani is an investigation into the correlation between the life of the soil and the life of the Guarani Mbyá farmers living in the Kalipety village, within the Tenondé Porã territory, in the southern part of São Paulo.
Substrato Guarani is an exercise in listening, an attempt to translate the drawings and colors of the particles that make up the soil, together with the sounds that structure the words of those who plant.
Substrato Guarani is a composition and a confluence of things, beings, visions, sounds, and different techniques.
Substrato Guarani is a collection/archive of vinyl records, accompanied by images and texts produced by a diversity of existences, they are:
Conception, overall project coordination, photographs and design: Teresa Siewerdt
Farmers:
Jera Guarani
Pedro Karai Mirĩ
Wera Pires
Wera Mirin Alcides
Karai Poty - Manoel Lima
Karai Claudio
Sound pieces: Rodolfo Valente
Audio recording:
Kerexu Mirim
Kerexu Martim
Translation from Guarani: Jordi Karai Mirĩ
Translation/reading of Pfeiffer's Chromatography: Sebastião Pinheiro
Production, image capture and carpentry: Pablo Paniagua
My piece memorial do granito, for piano and electronic sounds was released as part of Ramos, brazilian pianist Luciane Cardassi's new album, published by Canadian label Redshift Music society and now available in all digital platforms, like Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify and Bandcamp. The album features pieces for piano and electronics written for her by composers Rafael de Oliveira, Edson Zampronha, Maria Eduarda Mendes Martins, Paulo Guicheney, Rodrigo Meine and Paulo Rios Filho.
This is how Cardassi describes her new album:
"Ramos showcases seven works created in collaboration with seven
Brazilian composers, exploring new ways to relate to and reflect upon
today’s world, including the creative processes themselves. These works
were initially part of a broader 10-year project – entitled Going North –
through which I developed a number of collaborations with composers
from my native country, Brazil, along with those from my adopted
country, Canada. The seven pieces recorded here all challenged and
expanded my roles as a pianist and as a performer. They required me to
make use of my voice in new ways, and to develop new methods to promote
synchronicity with the electronic media. The creative processes that led
to this program continued into the recording and production of the
album itself, in collaboration with audio engineer Amandine Pras. I am
deeply grateful to each of the composers who embarked on this journey
with me, and hope that the listening experience for you will be as
rewarding as the creative processes were for us."
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!
thunderword. donnerwort. palavra mal dita: palavratrovão. trova-trovão,
palavra-palavrão. palavra impossível, palavra indizível, palavra
impronunciável. palavra sem sentido que contém tantos sentidos. trovão,
trovão, trovão e outra vez trovão. em todas as línguas ou ao menos nas
línguas que pode conter uma boca. se o sentido pleno não se revela a uma
só consciência, evocaliza a onisciência
de todas as línguas, de todos os deuses-trovão: thores, júpiteres,
zeuses, iansãs: tonitroante palavra que é o que é. o verbo faça-se, o
verbo-luz. verbo inaugurador de mundos que no verbo não cabem, enquanto
que o verbo não cabe no mundo. palavra-objeto sonoro, objet trouvé,
trovejado, trovado, atrevido, trevado, travado na língua.
trovaneio-delírio em joyce, enjoy-se.
Tomando como ponto de partida a primeira das "thunderwords", palavras de
cem letras ou mais que perpassam o Finnegan's Wake, último romance de James Joyce, palavratrovão #1 foi escrita e dedicada para o Ateliê Contemporâneo, da
Escola Municipal de Música de São Paulo, grupo coordenado por Tiago
Gati.
O vídeo acima contém a gravação ao vivo da estreia realizada pelo grupo em 13.12.2018,
na Sala do Conservatório, na Praça das Artes em São Paulo, SP, Brasil.
Com: Allan Dantas, regente Gabrielle Camacho, voz Fabio Simão, trompete Joachim Emidio, percussão Samuel Moreira de Mello, violino Rodrigo Prado, violoncelo Julio Nogueira, contrabaixo
ruído cinza, silêncio cinza (grey noise, grey silence) is an octophonic piece comprising eigth posters in distinct colors, to be affixed in urban environment (preferably on public lighting posts close to each other or on opposite sides of the same road, suggesting a possible ways among them). Seven of these poster have the word "ruído" (noise in Portuguese) written in small case. The eighth of them bears the word “SILÊNCIO” in upper case. Text is always in grey color. Names of colors that fill the posters are commonly used in the audio jargon to describe different kinds of noise, establishing analogies between the frequency distribution with the color spectrum present in visible light.
Colored noise
White noise contains an estatstical distribution of all frequencies audible to human beings sounding with the same energy (as white light which contains the sum of all visible colors). Pink noise has less energy towards higher frequency and more towards the low end, being the intensity of each frequency (f) proportional to 1/f (as red is the color with the lowest frequency range, this kind of noise is called pink, as if it were a mixture of white and red). There is also red noise, even more emphatic towards low frequencies (intensity proportional to 1/f²), which is imprecisely also called brown noise, for it's frequencies may be generated by Brownian motion, named after botanist Robert Brown who observed it for the first time in 1827.
Blue noise can be obtained as the frequency distribution curve in pink noise is inverted. Violet noise comes by the same procedure applied to red/brown noise. Black noise has a somewhat controversial technical meaning, which may refer to the total absence of frequencies (silence), when thought in opposition to white noise.
Last, grey noise is a randomly generated noise attenuated by a specific curve that follows the sensibility of human hearing (bigger in some frequency and smaller in others), as a way to guarantee that every frequency is perceived with equal loudness. This emphasis on perceived loudness points out to a diversity of possible grey noises, as different listening conditions and even individual characteristics of each ear may interfere in these perceived equilibrium of intensities. Though grey noise has its nuances determined by a listening condition wich is specific, localized and individual.
The grey city
In the urban context of São Paulo, the grey colour recently acquired a specially dramatic tone, being used to cover large amounts of urban art, taken by the municipality as unwanted noise to be silenced to "beautify" the city. Grey, noise and silence are elements that this intervention aims to somehow bring into sounding.
Places chosen for the two interventions done so far stage urban space disputes which have sound as a privileged element. The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Square, the same theaters which triggered a regional revitalization were not so much time ago were fined for breaking the city noise regulation. The second one, Luz, has a place devoted to music, known as Sala São Paulo, which constitutes a strategic placeholder for an enormous real estate speculation process that has begun in that neighbourhood in the 1990's and is recently speeding up.
Intervention in Rosevelt Square, São Paulo (29.08.2017).
Audiovisual documentation: Rui Chaves
Intervention in the Luz region, São Paulo (14.09.2017).
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 acrucial 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, likeEduardo 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 withestudo 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 minorBWV 1008 byJ. S. Bach. The above recording contains only the first movement, which I had "rewritten" in 2011 intended as part of afeature 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 cellistWilliam 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 inCuritiba, another inSão Paulo (already incorporated to the _gestuário procect). We look forward to new performances soon and, hopefully, also a full recording of all the compositions.
This October bring three opportunities of listening to my electroacoustic composition work: one concert in Piauí (North of Brazil) and two in São Paulo.
October 6th, 20h,there will be a a very special concert in the Café Concerto from SESC Caixeiral in Parnaíba, Piauí: memorial do granito (2015),
for piano and electroacoustic sounds will be played for the first time in Brazil by Canada-based pianist Luciane Cardassi, for whom the piece was written and dedicated. The electroacoustic diffusion is in charge of the composer Paulo Rios Filho, who organizes the concert and also presents his work Ramos. Follow here the programming from SESC Piauí.
Also October 6th, more than 3.000 km away, at 20h30 I'll be doing the diffusion of my acousmatic pieceespectro
jasmim (2012), with the 52-speakers orchestra from Studio PanAroma/Unesp, sharing the program with colleagues that are either students or alumni from the studio. This concert is part of the XI BIMESP, the not-to-be-missed Bienal de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo, organized by Studio PanAroma, under artistic direction of Flo Menezes. Take a look at the complete programming hereand follow the event onfacebook.
October 15th, 17h, the project Gestuário will be presented, together with cellistWilliam Teixeira and dancerMaíra Alves. It comprises a repertoire which investigates gestualities of instrumental and electronic sounds and contemporary dance in several possible combinations. I'll present my estudo sobre materiais
resistentes nº 1[study on resistant materials] (2011-2016),
in which written and electronic interferences are applied to the well-known Suíte nº 2 in D minor (BMW 1008) by J. S. Bach. Program is completed by pieces by Danilo Rosseti, Felipe de Almeida Ribeiro, Eduardo Frigatti e
Felipe Merker Castellani, in which I'll be doing the diffusion of electronic sounds. Check herethe complete agenda of estúdiofitacrepe-sp.
