Premiere: April 12, 2024 – European Center for the Arts – Hellerau, Dresden
Dedicated to: Steven Schick and Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Commissioned by: Ircam-Centre Pompidou, Hellerau European Center for the Arts, Monday Evening Concerts, Brenda and Steven Schick, Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Musicians: 4 percussionists
Duration: 53′
POETICA is a voyage of self-discovery. A journey that comes to life through breathing: by stimulating various components of the sonic psyche, inhalations and exhalations make sound events emerge and disappear, and generate the micro- and macro-structures of discourse. This journey is rooted in sound places invaded by what is external to us: I have recorded countless noises and shouts from demonstrations, whether in Tel Aviv, the USA or Paris, in the course of 2023. Indeed, we all live in a complex reality from which we can no longer seem to escape.
However, the sound exploration gradually crystallizes, as the breath of breathing emerges and, with it, the discovery of what percussion hides at the heart of its sounds. From the tremolos of the percussion emerge, like a shadow, the tremolos of the strings. And these two types of tremolo mingle and experience their combined identity, pushing and stretching within it, until we experience percussion tremolo and string tremolo as a single imaginary field. Despite a difficult and intrusive reality, we can always turn inward, and find lucidity and hope.
Our intimacy constitutes a singular natural environment, endowed with its own vitality.