Human Sensory Motor Schema
for tuba & electronics
Composed for Rachel Kelly
First performance: 22 Nov 2021
Performed at the ANAM Set Festival by
Rachel Kelly (tuba)
Program note:
I wrote this piece to focus on an economy of language that I’ve been interested in recently. I take limited resources, shape them into a larger structure, and aim for sensuality. Recently I find stripping things back to their fundamental elements; simplifying impulses rather than elaborating them, more compelling and compositionally intriguing. This approach is useful when it’s so difficult to say anything useful in a short space of time; it would be desirable if music could achieve some kind of aphoristic, objective quality, but of course it can’t.
So what one is left with is the materials - 17 multiphonics here, ornamented and doubled with sine waves. This combination triggers acoustic phenomena in the performance space, beatings triggered by hybrids of sines, bass notes and alto voice. There is both a mechanical and organic relation occurring; feedback and exchange between instrument, musician and loudspeaker. Why is this interesting? Existing within relentless capitalism, living half inside machines, it’s easy to forget the value of focused listening and the sensory experiences it can gift.
About the composer:
Anthony Pateras is a composer, pianist and electronic musician active since the late 90s. His work has been recognized through the 2020 Michael Kieran Harvey Scholarship, residencies at La Becque, Akademie Schloss Solitude and ZKM, fellowships from Creative Victoria, the Sydney Myer and Ian Potter Foundations, and was nominated twice at the UNESCO Rostrum of Composers. Pateras has been commissioned by INA-GRM, Radio France, Südwestrundfunk, ensemble]h[iatus and Kitchen Orchestra Stavanger. He has received performances from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Golden Fur and ICE, among many others. He has written extensively for percussion; his solos Hypnagogics and Mutant Theatre being widely performed, and ensemble works commissioned and premiered by Eklekto, Synergy, Speak Percussion and Percussion Group The Hague. He recently wrote Syncope(s) for 5 masked singers, piano and electronics (Centro di Musica, Modena, 2020), Mécanique Céleste for a building by architect Alberto Figuccio (HEIG-VD, Yverdons-Les-Bains, 2020) and Pseudacusis for electro-acoustic septet (Musica Sanae, Naples, Sokolowsko, Berlin, 2019). Since 2012, he has worked on a cycle of solo/tape pieces which explore sonic phenomena through bespoke recording techniques. So far, interpreters include Jessica Aszodi (voice), Lina Andonovska (flute), Rebecca Lane (piccolo), Samuel Dunscombe (clarinet), Judith Hamann (cello), Jonathan Heilbron (contrabass) and Callum G’Froerer (double-bell trumpet). Pateras has performed and recorded in the bands North Of North, tētēma, Thymolphthalein, PIVIXKI, Beta Erko and Pateras/Baxter/Brown. He has ongoing duos with the violinist Erkki Veltheim and the electronic musician Jérôme Noetinger, and works closely with the programmer Rohan Drape.
More info: https://www.anthonypateras.com/
Photo credit: Tim Grey
Composers & WorksAnthony Pateras
