Miguel Azguime • UTOPIA
(ThS)inking Survival Kit • Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble with Frances M.Lyunch, conductor Guillaume Bourgogne
ConCordas • Camerata Alma Matter conductor Pedro Neves
(ThS)inking Survival Kit * (2010) 37:24
1. Prologue
2. Where the bee sucks there suck I William Shakespeare
3. Intermezzo I
4. Desperate Song Eugénio de Andrade
5. All day I hear the noise of waters James Joyce
6. Bird Calls
7. Whale Songs
8. Un grand sommeil noir Paul Verlaine
9. Fundo do Mar Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
10. Para Além Doutro Oceano Fernando Pessoa
11. Intermezzo II
12. Adamastor Luiz de Camões
13. Intermezzo III
14. Um espelho em frente de um espelho Herberto Helder
15. ConCordas (2017) 17:21
Total time 54:45
* commissioned by the City of London Festival
with funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
LIVE-RECORDINGS
1. to 14.
Guillaume Bourgogne (conductor), Frances M. Lynch (soprano), Miguel Azguime (reciter), Raquel Lima (flute), Nuno Pinto (clarinet), Vítor Vieira (violin), Filipe Quaresma (cello), Elsa Silva (piano), João Dias (percussion), Paula Azguime (electronics)
15.
Pedro Neves (conductor); Ana Pereira, David Ascensão, Afonso Fesch, César Nogueira, Juan Maggiorani, Ana Filipa Serrão, José Teixeira (violins); Jorge Alves, Joana Cipriano, Helena Leão (violas); Marco Pereira, Ana Cláudia Serrão (cellos); Margarida Afonso (double bass)
Miguel Azguime – UTOPIA
This CD includes two live recordings of two very different works: "(ThS)inking survival kit" (2010) for soprano, reciter, ensemble and electronics and “ConCordas” (2017) for 13 strings instruments. "(ThS)inking survival kit” recording took place at Centro Cultural de Cascais in July 2016 and “ConCordas” was recorded at the premiere performance of the piece during the Música Viva Festival 2017 at O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon.
"(ThS)inking survival kit" was originally written for the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble and soprano Frances M. Lynch and was commissioned by the City of London Festival with funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in co-production with EGEAC (Lisbon) and responds in its own way to the underlying theme of the festival, more specifically sustainability, biodiversity and climate change consequences, including the question of eustasy (term used to describe the global change in sea level).
The piece develops thus under these environmental issues with water, sea, birds, marine animals, bees and even fantastic beings, taking a prominent role in the construction of the formal program for the work.
The poems or fragments of poems used in the piece also converge in the same direction, forming the symbolic archetypes of a supra narrative, yet abstract.
Texts from 8 poets are used in the piece in the following order of appearance:
William Shakespeare - fragment from "The Tempest", Eugénio de Andrade – “Canção Desesperada / Desperate Song”, James Joyce - fragment from "Chamber Music", Paul Verlaine - "Un grand sommeil noir / A long black sleep", Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen - "No fundo do mar / At the bottom of the sea" Fernando Pessoa - fragment from " Para Além Doutro Oceano / Beyond another ocean", Luís de Camões - fragments of Book V of "The Lusiads", Herberto Helder - fragment from "Photomaton & Vox".
“ConCordas” was originally written for the Camerata Alma Mater string orchestra. It’s scored for 13 solo strings but more exactly it could be said to be scored for 53 individual strings. It is built upon two superimposed harmonic aggregates: a large harmonic microtonal spectrum and a large chromatic cluster: two masses that continuously drift, that blend or separate, that thicken or become thinner.