I say voiceless: I don’t want to write one more piece.
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The ensemble play the written music in "silent mode". Gestures without sounds |
The music vanishes and we are facing its remains: breaths, movements, mistaken notes, eye-contact. As if it were junk spread on the beach, this “new piece” invites to draw the shape of a missing party from the waste.
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This image contains SPOILERS! Only one real note is played at the very end! |
And the no-piece becomes a piece! Hard to escape the void.
The music is defined for what it is omitted instead of for what it shows,
like a post-Cage experiment reloading the forgotten sounds.
I write a silent piece with a lot of notes.
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To be played in silent mode... a couple of accidental sounds are welcome! |
The musicians and the audience are still there, occupying the hall, facing a full nothingness a bit silly. Both audience and musicians are repeating its concert rituals with the hope of recovering some sense.
Tired of being told…
Tired of solfège…
Tired of abstraction
Talk to me in my face!
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The ensemble conform a half circle on stage keeping eye-contact one with another. |
The musicians are asked to play the shell of the egg, better said the air around the egg and the trombone returns the notes from the outside in, blowing comebacks.
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The whole choreography of the piece, able to be written in a napkin. Click to enlarge ( a big napkin, though) |
Hopefully the audience laughs, filling the air around like a breath of spring.
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The first version of this piece
was written for Aleph Ensemble, France, in 2013 for violin, violoncello, piano
and percussion. It lasts only one minute! Even Out loud is a piece basically to be
seen, I 've got an audio recording of the concert that I find very interesting. The recording of a silent piece is
acknowledging all the sounds around the piece, so it is possible to hear everything except for what is written in the score.
Listening to the audio follows
somehow the same logic of building sense for what is around instead of for what
is shown. Listen to Out loud maximun volume!
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I am working know on a second
version, a bit longer (3 minutes!) for the New Mexico Ensemble, for violin,
violoncello, percussion plus accordion and trombone.