There could not be a Festival Residències without the presence of El Sindicat de Altavoces, a resident project linked to Phonos since 2006, and from which its creator and head, Pablo Fredes, is responsible for disseminating and presenting the most intrepid acousmatic creation to the public. In this special edition of El Sindicato de Altavoces, we recover four works from the Phonos sound archive, projected in the immersive sound environment of the Sala Aranyó by Fredes himself.

Programme

Pablo Fredes: Di minuto

Jep Nuix: His Master's Voice 

Stijn Govaere: Far bollire piano per 8 minuti

Joseph Sims: On lines physical

Notes

His Master's Voice is written from a phrase from Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus: "In Art, every newcomer strives towards an unprecedented form". Having recorded the phrase with my own voice (hence the title again) on a digital sampler, I later separated the phonemes and transformed them into musical sounds. The voice, finally, is not recognisable as such. The characteristics of these manipulations obliged me to divide the sentence into three sections and to present them in reverse order.  That is to say, by redoing the compositional process in reverse order, the resulting sentence would not make sense: "Towards an unprecedented form - every newcomer strives - in art".

The inspiration for Far bollire piano per 8 minuti came to Stijn Govaere while cooking and listening to piano music on the radio, attracted by the contrast between the grainy sound of boiling water or oil and the rich, harmonious sounds of the piano. When boiling the piano (for 8 minutes), the piano sounds are rather dark and at times melancholic, as if giving up any hope of escaping the boiling oil.

On Lines Physical is a collaborative composition between sonic composer Joseph Sims and craftsman (physical composer) Maxwell Sims. The piece utilizes temporal rhythms that occur during Maxwell’s sewing process to define both its micro and macro structures. Handicraft relies on a series of highly refined movements. Much like a written signature, the rhythmic nature of these movements is unique to the sequence being performed, and the individual performing them. By drawing a connection between physical sequences and compositional form, the piece highlights the performance of craft as a vessel for individual skill and identity. Beyond this subject specific lens, the relationship between maker and process is exercised through sonic aesthetics. Contrasts between creative flow and frustrated interjections continually define the development of the timeline, speaking to the complex nature of labor and creativity. The piece was awarded 2nd prize in the Destellos Foundation’s international acousmatic competition [2022], held in Argentina.

Bios

Pablo Fredes is a Chilean composer. He has studied music at the Catholic University of Valparaíso. He studied composition with the Chilean composer Sergio Ortega and also studied ENMP electroacoustic music, Paris, France. In addition, he attended the composition workshop of José Manuel López López in Paris 8, at the University of Saint Dennis, 2002-2003. In 2006 he began his residence in Barcelona, studying composition in the Master of "Musical Composition and Contemporary Technologies" at the Pompeu Fabra University, directed by Gabriel Brncic. He has taught at the DCMT Master and Postgraduate Program at Pompeu Fabra University, as well as at the Master of Sound Art at the University of Barcelona and at the Hangar Foundation. He currently runs El Sindicato de Altavoces, a acousmatic music concert series at Phonos.

Barcelona-based sound artist Stijn Govaere has been awarded the first prize for Electronic Music by the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. After studying classical composition at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent, he attended a summer course in Electroacoustic Music with Annette Vande Gorne (disciple of Pierre Schaeffer, the inventor of Concrete Music) which led him to sound design and electronic music.

Jep Nuix (1955 -1998) studied flute, harmony and counterpoint at the Conservatori Superior Municipal de Música de Barcelona, and composition and instrumentation with Gabriel Brncic. One of the scholarships he received enabled him to be composer-in-residence for a course at the electronic music studio of the Basel Conservatory (Switzerland). His dedication to electroacoustic music developed at the Laboratorio de Música Electroacústica Phonos' in Barcelona. Between 1988 and 1991 he was coordinator of the Sound and Music Laboratory of the Centre for Initiatives and Experimentation for Young People of the Fundació Caixa de Pensions.

Joseph Sims [b. 1996] lives and works in Montreal QC. He studied electroacoustic composition at Concordia University [2022]. He specialises in sound for visual media and acoustic composition.