Piano Etude III
Felt very lucky to have this piece performed by the incredible @nalnichen yesterday. Thank you Nalni and @riotensemble - this was very special!
Night 1 of Plus Minus’ three-night residency at Café OTO culminates with the premiere of Andrea Balency-Béarn’s Mappings, a work that transforms personal spaces into immersive soundscapes. Drawing on field recordings from two locations in Mexico City and one in London, the piece reimagines these environments through live performance and digital transformation.
Hear Andrea Balency-Béarn talk about the work and its sources in this video.
📍 Café Oto
📍 12 January
🎟️ Tickets in bio
#london #newmusic #chambermusic #experimentalmusic
A shokunin (職人) is a Japanese expression used to describe a craftsperson or artisan dedicated not only to technical skill but to a lifelong pursuit of mastery, precision, and humility working with care, discipline, and respect for both the material and the act of making. The shokunin use material such as bamboo, wood, stone and clay, they listen to it, collaborate with it, to reveal its true and inherent form.
Shokunin I is a process. Bringing together Japanese traditional craft aesthetics and ideologies with dance and movement, allowing them to emerge and bloom into something new, where beauty is found through the depth and detail that emerge through dedication and patience. Returning again and again, to the same act.
職人（shokunin）とは、単なる技術者を指す言葉ではなく、熟達、精度、そして謙虚さを生涯にわたって追求する作り手を表す日本の概念である。素材や制作行為そのものに対する敬意を持ち、丁寧さ、規律、配慮をもって仕事に向き合う。職人は、竹、木、石、土といった素材を用い、それらに耳を澄まし、対話し、協働することで、素材が本来内包している真のかたちを引き出していく。
「Shokunin I」はプロセスである。日本の伝統的な工芸の美学や思想を、ダンスや身体の動きと結びつけ、それらが静かに姿を現し、新たなものとして開花していく。献身と忍耐によって生まれる深さや細部の中に美を見出し、変わらぬ所作に繰り返し身を置く。
「Shokunin I」A dance work In Process
Created by @ayamisaki1219 and @kai_tomi
Music composed by @andreabalencybearn
Filmed by @nikevschie
With support from @balletboyz
EN EL CAMINO - David Pablos
This film holds a very special place in my heart and making the music for it was a dream - the film being set in the north of Mexico, most of the score was made by layering tons of accordion lines and processing them with modular electronics. You can hear some of it here.
I couldn’t have made this score without the precious help of @kai__campos who worked his magic on the modular processing and mixing.
And thank you always to incredible director and very very dear friend @david.pablos for trusting me. So proud of what we achieved.
I’ve recently been working on developing feedback systems between live instruments, scores and live processing with electronics as part of my PhD research work. Last week marked the premieres of two instances of these systems in the form of non-linear, solo instrument pieces, and I feel extremely lucky to have been able to collaborate with two incredible performers on them: the first piece, for bass clarinet and electronics, was performed by Heather Roche / @heather_roche ; and the second, for mezzo-soprano and electronics, by Lotte Betts-Dean / @dottelettsbean
Here are visual excerpts from the scores along with some audio from the live performance of the bass clarinet piece with Heather Roche. Investigating themes of resonance and distortion, the scores feed into Max MSP in real time whilst the electronics process the acoustic sound, creating a very lively and dynamic feedback loop between the three.
I’ll be working on more developed versions of these over the next few months as well as a longer version for ensemble, which will be premiered next January - more soon!
A huge thanks to @ledrewett , @woolrichjohn@philcashian and @aaronhollowaynahum for commissioning these!
So great to hear my concerto for tabletop electric guitar and violin yesterday on BBC 3. Thank you always @aaronhollowaynahum and @riotensemble , as well as brilliant soloists @dom.howard_ and @emilytrubshaw.violin .
And huge thanks to Phil Dawson for engineering and being such a great partner on the amplification/electronics front!
📸Beautiful photography from the premiere by @samwalton.photography
Finalmente ve la luz el single “A machine to be moved by” de @gal.go y @andreabalencybearn , una hermosa sesión de improvisación, juego y sinergia que nos recuerda que la canción es solamente ser testigo de un momento. Estamos muy agradecidos de poder compartir esto con ustedes.
Link en la bio.
Portada por @marilynbaker.online
Recently finished this piece for Toy Piano + electronics for the amazing @_yshani which she will be performing 5th of March at Forth Hall in Sheffield! Very excited to hear it performed.
The piece was the result of lots of experimentation on Max with Orchidea and Bach, and I have @ircam_paris and @g.lorieux to thank for giving me the tools to do this - can’t wait to do more with it.
Very special concert this evening with @riotensemble@aaronhollowaynahum@heather_roche and AML scholars @royalacademyofmusic 18:30 at the Susie Sainsbury Theatre, where we’ll be performing pieces we wrote after Yoko Ono involving music, theatre, video and performance. Honoured to be a part of this incredible group of performers and composers.
📸 from rehearsals @composer_shin_kim
