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Durme, durme

(2023)

for sextet and playback

Program notes

The inspiration for this piece came to me at a record store in Madrid, where I came across a second hand vinyl from the 1960s, a collection of arrangements of Sephardic ballads sung by Yehoram Gaon, which I ended up buying. This album caught my attention since I knew very little of the Sephardic culture other than its history of diaspora and the fact that one of its languages, Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino (which was also the language of the songs in the album), derives from Old Spanish and is mostly intelligible by Spanish speakers.

I was very touched by the content of the songs in this album, ranging from love songs to laments to lullabies. Inspired by the theme of the night (which was the main theme of the concert for which this work was written) I made some experiments playing the lullabies of the album in a turntable with a particular fixation in the words 'Durme, durme' - meaning 'sleep, sleep'. Fragments of these experiments became the content of my electronic part, and its interactions with the ensemble aim to provide a reflection on cultural transmission through time, its resulting erasure and loss, and its constant reinvention and reactualisation.

Premiered at Mozarteum (Salzburg, AT) as part of the Nightshifts project, led by Andreas Bäuml and Cassandra Hutsteiner.

Duration: c. 7'

3.07.2022 – IYCA Ticino 2022, LAC (Lugano, CH)         Performers: Les Percussions de Strasbourg (Minh-Tâm Nguyen, François Papirer, Thibaut Weber, Hsin-Hsuan Wu, Yi-Ping Yang)

Instrumentation

Alto flute

Bass clarinet in B-flat

Percussion

        Bass drum
        2 crotales (high A, high A-sharp)

Piano

Violin

Violoncello

Performances

17.07.2024 – Aula, PROGR (Bern, CH)

15.07.2024 – Mozarteum (Salzburg, AT)

        Performers: Cristina Pastore, Maïwenn Bachmann, Alberto Anhaus, Alba Llorach Roca, Leon Keuffer, Cassandra Hutsteiner

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© 2023 José del Avellanal Carreño

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