The Electric Voice - Nicholas Isherwood

JACOPO BABONI SCHILINGI / Notturno (Nocturno)

Notturno (Nocturno) is a short composition for Nicholas Isherwood and live electronics. Started in 2005, this short composition has been rewritten several times to reach its current form. It is a simple descending melodic line on a text by Yannick Liron. This little composition is in the tradition of nocturnes or lieds for accompanied voice. The electronics are the result of various sound processing techniques used on Nicholas Isherwood's own voice.

Jacopo Baboni Schilingi comes from the so-called "aer-music" which combines writing and interactivity. The international press qualifies him as one of the most representative composers of his generation. He is regularly invited to concerts and performances in theaters all over the world such as the Théâtre de Champs Elysée, the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan, the Auditorium in Rome, the Miller Theatre and the Alvin Ailey Theater in New York, the Chanel Nexus Hall in Tokyo, etc. In 2015 he participated twice in the Venice Biennale. He created the music for the Turkish pavilion and designed the closing day concert at the Sala delle Armi. In 35 years of artistic activity, Baboni Schilingi has given more than 450 concerts, including more than 50 monographic ones.

RODRIGO SIGAL / Micromegas

Micromegas is a short experiment commissioned by Nicholas Isherwood in which the timbre of the voice explores connections with the computer part in a fast-paced and immersive abstract story inspired by texts by Voltaire.

Jorge Rodrigo Sigal (Mexico City, 1971) is a composer and cultural manager, as well as a professor at the Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Morelia. He coordinates the Bachelor's Degree in Music and Artistic Technology and is interested in working with new technologies, especially in the field of electroacoustic music. Since 2006 he is the director of the Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras where he promotes diverse initiatives of creation, education, research and cultural management related to sound and music. He also participates in the Lumínico project, is director of the Visiones Sonoras festival and editor of the magazine Ideas Sónicas.

LUONG HUE TRINH / La lettre perdue for voice, electronics and video. Poetry by Emmanuel Labrande.

Many years ago I lost a letter that I loved. I often read it when I felt empty. La lettre perdue is the condensation of certain passages that I remember and of the reveries that reading it never ceased to provoke in me.

After studying at the Vietnam National Academy of Music, Luong Hue Trinh graduated in Jazz Keyboard in 2010. From 2015 to 2018, she obtained a full scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service for the program "New Techniques in Composition" and then for the Master's degree in Multimedia Composition at the Hochschule für Musik & Theater in Hamburg, Germany.

Trinh has received commissions for exhibitions, festivals, concerts, radio... and has collaborated with artists from different artistic fields in Asia, Europe, America, Australia and Africa. "Illusions", his first album, was released on Chicago's Bread and Roses label. It was well reviewed and was on the "Best of 2016 - Albums of The Year" list by Avant Music News, San Francisco-USA.

JUAN JOSÉ ESLAVA / Open body for bass-baritone, electronics and actor

Texts: Khyan.
Staging, dramaturgy: Javier Álvaro.
Lighting and costume design: Teatrolari.
Musical composition, computer production, original conception: Juan José Eslava.

Performers: Nicholas Isherwood, vocals. Jacopo Baboni, live electronics. Javier Álvaro, theater-dance.

Sophie Bancon, recorded voice.

This project has been supported by the program of stays of the Huarte Center. The Teatrolari Theater School collaborates in the project.

Composer, author of an opera (Oteiza) as well as orchestral, chamber, solo, vocal, instrumental and electronic works, Eslava collaborates with artists in the musical, choreographic, theatrical and performative fields, focusing on the relationship between space, body and sound.

A student of Gérard Grisey, Emmanuel Nunes and Claude Ballif, he studied at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique de Paris as well as at IRCAM. He has received commissions from institutions such as OCN, Enigma Group, Nomad Ensemble, Plural, Neopercusión, Sigma, Trio Zukan.... His music is present in the main festivals (ICMC, SICMF, Time-of-Music, World New Music Days, Transitio, Puentes, Résonnances, Musikaste, Ensems...) and venues in Europe, Asia, Mexico and Argentina.

He organizes since 2014 the After Cage festival as a member of the collective E7.2. He teaches Composition and Orchestration at the Conservatorio Superior de Aragón since 2013.

SINA FALLAHZADEH / Cantique de métèque (The mystic canticle)

Piece commissioned by: IRCAM-Centre Pompidou
Computer design realized in the studios of IRCAM-Centre Pompidou
IRCAM - Computer music design: Serge Lemouton, Quentin Nivromont  

"This piece, a kind of self-portrait, is based on one of my poems that talks about being constantly emigrating in the world. Cantique de métèque is a sort of 4-part polyphony. Three voices are recorded and the solo voice is performed in concert. I use the virtual choir, a technology developed by Greg Beller at IRCAM, to transform the voices. This technology allows me to create a virtual choir from Nicholas Isherwood's voice. I complete the composition using some samples from a real choir and synthetic sounds," says Fallahzadeh.

Sina Fallahzadeh, born in 1981, is an Iranian composer living in France. His compositions, decidedly contemporary, include elements taken from his rich cultural heritage, but also from other historical periods and often distant traditions. His music is part of a unique relationship between knowledge and culture. Fallahzadeh's compositional process attaches great importance to the morphological development of sound gestures, to the evolution of timbres and to the spatial interactions between the different layers of sound.

Sina received her first composition lessons with Alireza Mashayekhi in Iran. After obtaining a master's degree in piano performance, she moved to Europe and studied with Gérard Pesson, Denis Dufour and Édith Canat de Chizy in Paris, and with Michael Jarrell, as well as Luis Naón and Éric Daubresse in Geneva. From 2015 to 2016, he attended IRCAM's practical training in Composition and Computer Music (Cursus) in Paris.

ALEKSANDRA BILIŃSKA / #2020...Covid 1984

#Covid 1984 is the third part of the cycle entitled #2020 ... . At the beginning of 2020 our fast-paced life with thousands of tasks suddenly comes to a halt. We start counting time again. #2020 is a cycle of compositions that measures time, symbolically, with the changes that came with that year. The third part of this cycle, Covid 1984 is written for and dedicated to Nicholas Isherwood. Symbolically it is dedicated to all artists who spent a long time in isolation, without work. The text of this piece is based on an interview conducted by the composer with artists from different cultures and languages and on texts by Samuel Beckett and George Orwell.

Composer, teacher, ethnomusicologist and improviser, Aleksandra Bilińska graduated from the Department of Composition, Conducting and Music Theory at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice and the Institute of Musicology at the University of Warsaw, specializing in Ethnomusicology. Aleksandra Bilińska has worked as a lecturer at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw and at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland. As a theorist and performer, she has participated in numerous international and national conferences and has led numerous workshops focusing on contemporary music and piano improvisation. As a composer, Bilińska has won prizes in the most prestigious competitions and the turning point of her compositional career was the 2003 production of P®uder-ja for the famous Polish Dance Theater in Poznań in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Andrzej Morawiec. Since then, he has created electronic music for many choreographers and artists. Her compositions have been performed in many countries. She is the author of books and articles on contemporary music.