Komponist:innen

Hier stellen wir euch einige unsere Komponis:innen vor, die uns ihr Material zur Verfügung gestellt haben.

Joan Tan

Joan Tan Jing Wen is a Singaporean composer currently based in Cologne, Germany. Her recent works places attention, perception and the fallibility of memories at the forefront of her compositions. She is fascinated by how attention constructs and distorts one’s perceptions, and shapes one’s entire experience, both in music and in everyday lives. She believes that every sound triggers a sensory response, engages ones imagination and evokes emotions through associations. Recognisable sound sources are distorted in her works, leaving behind crafted gestures and faint memories of what they once were.

Study of Fragile Objects #1

A collection of recorded sounds taken from discarded glass bottles, falling marbles, and an old wind-up music box with a broken crank. Study of Fragile Objects #1 derives materials from seemingly forsaken items, as if found in a child’s abandoned toy box. In this piece, everything is almost. Sounds are spliced, distorted and recombined, obscuring sound sources to different degrees, wandering between liminal soundscapes that thread between reality and hidden sonic worlds.

Christian Brandenburger

Christian Brandenburger ist Dirigent, Komponist, Pianist und Organist, Preisträger zahlreicher Instrumental- und Kompositionswettbewerbe und studiert seit 2023 an der HfMT Köln. Seine Werke wurden in mehreren europäischen Ländern aufgeführt, u.a. an der Kölner Kinderoper, beim Festival “Cantiere internazionale d’Arte” in Montepulciano und beim “Frequenz_ Festival” Kiel. Als Dirigent assistierte er kürzlich beim WDR-Sinfonieorchester und an der Kölner Oper, wo er demnächst erneut tätig sein wird.

Walking around the Trap II

Der Versuch, Klavierstücke zu schreiben, ohne in die Falle zu tappen, die es ist, ein Klavierstück zu schreiben.

Carlos Lopes

Carlos Lopes ist ein portugiesischer Komponist, Dirigent und Pianist aus Guimarães. 2021 war er Young Composer-In-Residence am Konzerthaus Casa da Música in Porto, wo seine Werke von der Sinfonieorchester Porto und dem Remix Ensemble uraufgeführt wurden. Nach einem abgeschlossenen Masterstudium in Komposition bei Miroslav Srnka absolviert Carlos derzeit sein Masterstudium in Interpretation Neue Musik – Dirigieren bei Susanne Blumenthal an der HfMT Köln.

As Useless a Memory for piano, accessories e electronics

The work was commissioned and written for the DME Artistic Residency in Seia, with pianist Inês Lopes. The title is taken from the poem of the same name by Kae Tempest (“as useless a memory as any other”), a brief and tragic reminder that not everything ephemeral escapes the weight of memory. The choice of this theme came in the context of our concert at the DME Festival, which focused on the legacy of the composer Constança Capdeville and her piece Avec Picasso ce Matin. As part of her master’s studies, Inês researched this piece in depth and came across material discarded by Capdeville for the development of the tape. These are nearly 30 minutes of recordings that illustrate the rather experimental process of the composer – playing various instruments, manipulating the tape speed, recording samples of voices and everyday objects, etc. It moved me, largely because of their charm as discreet ephemera from her life and compositional method. As Useless a Memory is like a puzzle, where musical and performative aspects of Constança Capdeville’s work intertwine with my own language and dissolve in this attempt to describe a certain melancholy—present in the idea that each minute is equally significant or useless, may be cherished or discarded, will go unnoticed or persist forever in our memory.

Performed live by Inês Lopes at Casa Municipal da Cultura de Seia

December 6th, 2024

1n ^ s] for piano, toy piano and tape (6 min.)

[1n ^ s] is a short piece for piano, toy piano and fixed media based on the mathematical distortion of harmonic and arithmetic series. The main idea is the exponential destruction of the sound material during the work, destined to chaos from the moment it begins. A self-destructive moto perpetuo… dedicated to / written for my great (and slightly self-destructive) friend, Inês Lopes.

performed by Inês Lopes at OJM studios, September 2020

(recording by Francisco Brito, Real PDA)

Artefacst

  • Flute (+ Alto Flute)
  • Oboe
  • Bass Clarinet
  • Contrabassoon
  • Horn in F
  • Trumpet in Bb
  • Trombone
  • Percussion (2 players)
  • Piano
  • Violin I
  • Violin II
  • Viola
  • Cello
  • Double bass

Despite its strong connotation as an object of historical or cultural value, worthy of belonging in a museum, the term “artefact” designates any device produced by the human being. As for “digital artefact”, it is an accidental modification of information introduced by a certain technique or technology in a transformation process. Visual anomalies in a video or image caused by a weak signal or lapse in its transmission are examples of digital artefacts.

Artefacst is a sonic self-portrait, a brief capture of my inner musical world and its interaction with the outside noises I listen to daily. Fragments of metropolitan landscapes, engines and vehicles, household appliances and alarms can be heard in the electronics, sound artefacts of our daily lives. Musicians, in turn, use instruments specifically designed for the emission of sound, the product of hundreds of years of evolution and acoustic improvement.

The work is a continuous flow of brief atmospheres and events, which explore the dichotomy between instruments and machines (or the absence of it). Artefacst illustrates both a symbiosis between ensemble and electronics, and the chaos or indeterminacy introduced by the manipulation and mutilation of digital audio. If the opening bars introduce subtle and enigmatic sonorities, the end is a feverish clash between the instruments and the distorted, computerized sounds that escape from the speakers.

Performed live by Remix Ensemble Casa da Música, conducted by Peter Rundel

November 7th, 2021