URI SALA

Program Notes I devised the overall outline of the piece linking each instrument with one differently evolving yati phrase that determined in which tala cycles each of them participated. In this way, each musician's contribution increases, decreases or stays the same along the course of the piece in a systematical way. This results in a constantly evolving web of sound, in which all the possible combinations of instruments are exploited. The micro-instrumentation and the density of events, as well as the "harmony" of each moment, are also produced through the interlocking of several, smaller, nested yati phrases. This piece is thus the result of a particular kind of technical hybridization, whereby a technique traditionally reserved to the production of melodic phrases is promoted upwards by giving it a hierarchically superior structural function. Amsterdam, May 2008 Performed at the Conservatory of Amsterdam on June 13 2008 by Ainhoa Miranda - Bass Clarinet Roberto Genov

This piece started with a rhythmic layer that resulted from combining two Carnatic techniques called yati phrase and jathi bhedam. This uniform grid was then subjected to a constantly evolving process of cellular aggregation, turning it into a palindromically dense stream of sound. To this perfectly symmetrical thus somewhat dull skeletal structure I applied several localized filters that distorted the regular flow of events. Pitch-wise the piece consists of a theme I wrote with a bhasanga raga of 9 notes and its variations by means of simple degree transposition and intervallic inversion / displacement. Then, I defined some significant musical variables concerning modes of articulation, dynamics and expressive markers such as glissandi, trills and grace notes. With these in mind, I ignited certain musical processes, each with its own internal logic besides a few structural common downbeats of varying gravity, around which different constellations of musical possibilities crystallized