Semantic Blockage - for 6 players

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 Genova - Soprano Sax
Misha Sporck - Horn
Paula Chico - Percussion
Milena Dukanovic - Piano