In focus

Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble

With nearly a decade of activity, the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble gives priority to the promotion and performance of art music of our time developing a repertoire with electronic media integration – this is its greatest uniqueness both nationally and internationally. Since its foundation in 2007, the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble made more than 40 commissions to Portuguese composers, actively contributing to the internationalization of the Portuguese music of today. In the 2015/2016 season the ensemble will premiere 12 works, 4 of which were recently presented at the Música Viva Festival 2016. This year the Sond’Ar-te will release 2 new phonographic editions with Portuguese new music. The ensemble is also organises an International Competition for chamber music with electronics, now in its 6th edition. This year in September will also take place the International Young Composers Music Forum by the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble, encouraging musical creation and working as a laboratory, in the intersection of acoustic instruments, electronics and other media.

In June the In Focus is dedicated to this group that established itself in the Portuguese and international scene with an unusual artistic, editorial and educational dynamics, following the recent trends in contemporary music history and exploring new territories for the musical creation.

Specificity and genealogy

The uniqueness of Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble, namely the integration of electroacoustic media with acoustic instruments, is justified by recent trends in contemporary music history. Just as the development of large symphony orchestra, as a paradigm, was closely linked to the European repertoire of the nineteenth century, the repertoire of the second half of the twentieth century led to the arrival of a contemporary new paradigm, the "ensemble". In fact, since the late sixties, the international music scene saw the arrival, on a global scale, of the formation of numerous variants of ensembles adapted to their socio-cultural and technical specificities. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, six decades after the end of the Second World War, which marks a turning point in the history of Western music, the same way as the "orchestra" as an institution remained the key vehicle in perpetuation of repertoires that it gave rise to (Classical and Romantic), the "ensemble", in its multiple settings, has established itself as a basic tool in the interpretation of contemporary repertoire.

The institutions always emerge decades after the beginning of the formation of repertoires: the development of symphonic orchestras is subsequent to the first examples of symphonic repertoire, as well as the great wave of ensembles constitution, in the seventies and eighties of the 20th century, comes two to three decades after the beginning of the ensemble repertoire. Similarly, the eighties and nineties, and the generalization of computer music with the consequent democratization of electroacoustic media, widened the notions of musical writing, raising an increasing the amount of mixed repertoire which, in turn, imposes a significant change in the instrumental and organizational paradigm. Internationally, the ensembles have sought to adapt to this new context following the latest historical evolution, establishing for each project, partnerships with studios, musical workshops or technology centres. The ensemble, as an institution became polyvalent, and tried to cover both the instrumental repertoires and the mixed repertoires, which ones occupy currently a key place in contemporary musical creation.

It is in this context that the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble, specifically designed for the interpretation of this new mixed repertoire, was a pioneer in this field in international terms - just like the London Sinfonietta, in the late sixties, or the Ensemble Intercontemporain in the mid-seventies, were pioneers as “pure” instrumental ensembles.

Objectives

If on the one hand the constitution of Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble is raised by a major historical demand, on the other hand its objectives and concrete ambitions also make history, not just because it is capable of performing the existing repertoire, but because it motivates the creation of new works and new modes of interaction between electroacoustic means and instrumental means. In this context, it is essential to enhance the partnership between Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble, and the Miso Studio as a laboratory and electronic music studio, whose research work and computer-music development in the last decades has been providing technological means to the performance of a demanding repertoire.

This partnership is in fact in the genesis of the project. Ensemble and studio are complementary sides of one and the same currency, and will be directed by a single artistic director - allowing a perfect and harmonious fit between achievement in studio and presentation in concert, between composition and performance.

It is through this dual aspect of the project, taken as a whole, that the Sond'Ar-te has developed its four main objectives:

a) To stimulate Portuguese composition through a sustained policy of commissions of mixed works (such is the specificity of this project), offering the best conditions for Portuguese composers and offering a guarantee of quality in the performance of their works in concert.

It emphasizes the need to create a new paradigm, according to which the works should not be just premiered and immediately abandoned, but instead be part of a permanent repertoire that, whenever possible, should be revised and matured, improving each time the excellence of performances. At the same time, the contact with the technical diversity and aesthetics are crucial for the development of this new repertoire.

b) To stimulate the specific development of a mixed repertoire in Portugal, still relatively small when compared to more developed European countries.

Note that this relative scarcity of mixed repertoire in our country, is linked historically with an infra-structural reason: the near absence of music research centres and electroacoustic studios. In this sense, states such as France, Germany or Italy offered to their composers these working conditions half a century in advance (!). This serious historical gap - against which rebelled, for over thirty years without success, an important figure like Jorge Peixinho – was overcome by the Sond'Ar-te / Miso Studio project, allowing a continuous flow of performance and interpretation.

This project also aims to give young composers still in training, through a system of partnerships with educational institutions, conditions of a first approach to electro-instrumental experimentation and composition.

c) To implement a practice of internationalization of the Portuguese repertoire, which largely remains on the margins of the great European and world musical centres. At the same time, creating the conditions for musical creation and the technical and artistic excellence in performance, assuming the Sond'Ar-te as a vehicle to spread the national repertoire in international circuits of which the Portuguese music remains largely absent.

d) To ensure an interpretation that is based on a unique sound and a close work with composers, which allows them to develop a technical and artistic unity towards a high aesthetical level.

Commissions stimulating creation

The Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble was born in 2007. Since the beginning, under the artistic direction of Miguel Azguime, the ensemble gathered a number of musicians, conductors and composers, aware that it would be in the close link between different artists that a project of this kind would be able to meet its objectives.

The repertoire of Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemblecovers some of the most important works for ensemble of 20th and 21st centuries between 5 and 8 instruments. But the Sond’Ar-te also makes commissions of new works to composers, encouraging the strong and vibrant development of contemporary chamber music with electronics witnessed in recent decades. The group pays particular attention to the current Portuguese creation.

Numerous commissions have been made by Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble, more than 40 by 2015, addressing various aesthetic perspectives and different contexts of public presentation, since works aimed at children and youth to the most advanced research in instrumental and electroacoustic terms, and also through musical theatre and text-music relationships with the inclusion of Portuguese and international writers, from Camões and Shakespeare to Joyce, Herbert Helder, Carlos de Oliveira, etc.

Phonographic publishing

IIn terms of phonographic editions the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble has also been exemplary with 3 edited volumes including significant part of commissioned works and an extraordinary edition of a Cadavre Exquis with short pieces by 30 Portuguese composers of today.

Among the phonographic projects that will take place in 2016, are two new discs: a CD with musical theatre works including pieces by João Madureira, Miguel Azguime, Pedro Rebelo and the younger composers Daniel Martinho, Sofia Sousa Rocha and Ângela da Ponte. A second CD will also be released this year with live recording of works by Ricardo Ribeiro, Bruno Gabirro, Patricia Sucena de Almeida, Isabel Soveral, Eduardo Luís Patriarca, José Luís Ferreira and Paulo Ferreira Lopes.

The forum for young composers and the composition competition

Besides stimulating the creation of new works and also publishing them, Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensembledoes a series of other initiatives. One of them is an international composition competition for chamber music with electronics. At the same time, the Sond'Ar-te has done commented concerts and developed educational projects of various kinds. On the one hand, promoting the Young Composers Forum, held since 2011 (this year will be its 4th edition), and including open rehearsals of the ensemble, musical analysis sessions, workshops and composition masterclasses, performing and working with electronics thus promoting artistic accomplishment by new composers, in dialogue with interpreters, technicians and other creators. This forum is for composers up to 35 years, encouraging advanced training for young composers and inspiring them to compose mixed music. The idea is to support the creation and circulation of new musical works, allowing composers to present their works in public. Composers will have the opportunity to exchange ideas with each other, with the performers and with the audience, in a process that approaches the logic of a creative laboratory. This year, the 4th International Forum of Young Composers will be held between 13 and 17 September 2016 and will have the participation of the Argentine composer Francisco Uberto (who was in residence between September 2015 and February 2016 in the Laboratory of Electroacoustic Creation - Miso Studio) and Portuguese composers Jaime Reis, Filipe Lopes and Eduardo Luís Patriarca.

Another initiative that is linked to this pedagogical dimension is precisely the realization of the International Composition Competition of the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble, a common practice nowadays in the most dynamic chamber music groups, stimulating the creation of numerous works for ensemble and electronics. The Sond'Ar-te Composition Competition for composers of all ages and nationalities exists since 2008 and meets in 2016 its 6th edition. It has encouraged the creation of dozens of works of numerous composers, including the new generations. The winning works are played in the following season and then will become part of the repertoire of the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble. In the case of the winning composers being Portuguese, the contest also provides the scores publishing in partnership with the MIC.PT (Portuguese Music Research and Information Centre).

An international project

The Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemblehas performed in various parts of the world, especially (but not exclusively) in halls and festivals dedicated to contemporary music. Besides having played in several Portuguese cities and concert halls (including the Casa da Música or the Centro Cultural de Belém), the ensemble has performed in Paris, in Warsaw (Warsaw Autumn Festival), Bilbao (Guggenheim Museum) Cuenca, Santiago de Compostela, Toulouse, London (City of London Festival), Seoul, Tokyo or Berlin. During the 2015/2016 season the ensemble already performed in Grenoble and Munich.

The international dimension of the project is expressed not only in the constant presentation of Portuguese works abroad and trying to give the maximum international circulation of Portuguese compositions, but also in the call for regular cooperation of foreign musicians and conductors. This dimension is fundamental to enable sharing, dialogue, exchange and dissemination of new music in Europe and worldwide. The ensemble worked, among others, with conductors internationally recognized as Guillaume Bourgogne, Petter Sundkvist, Pedro Amaral, Jean-Sébastien Béreau, Laurent Cuniot, Franck Ollu and Pedro Neves.

The concert the ensemble will perform on the 9th July at Cascais Cultural Centre is a good example of working with guest artists. This is a monographic concert with works by Miguel Azguime in which will be premiered the work Trabalho Poético: A árvore (from the poetic work of Carlos de Oliveira in a co-comission by D. Luis Foudation and European Art Science Technology Network) to be performed by Marina Pacheco (soprano) and the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble, directed by Guillaume Bourgogne. In this concert will also be played a new version of the work (ThS)inking Survival Kit, for soprano and ensemble, sung by Frances M. Lynch (soprano) together with the Sond'Ar-te.

Technical quality and artistic excellence

In order to enable the on-going work of a group in which all interpreters have accomplished solo careers, the Sond'Ar-te has occasionally includes musicians for the same instruments. A set of exceptional interpreters of the new generations, most of whom with international solo careers and with a technical and artistic level of excellence. In the last Musica Viva Festival, the ensemble presented itself with Sílvia Cancela, Suzanna Lidegran, Nuno Pinto, Luis André Ferreira and Elsa Silva. To these interpreters we would have to add all those who ensure the sound projection and the live-electronics, most often performed by Miguel Azguime, Paula Azguime and the technical skills and know-how of the Miso Studio developers, also shared with the composers of the works themselves.

The future already present

The Sond'Ar-te just premiered last May four Portuguese works in the Música Viva Festival 2016, works written by Miguel Azguime, Ricardo Ribeiro, Bruno Gabirro, and Patricia Sucena de Almeida. Throughout this year they will also present new works by Eduardo Luís Patriarca, Jaime Reis, Francisco Uberto, Filipe Lopes and Pedro Rebelo. Examples of a permanent and persistent work, with an unusual passion in contemporary Portuguese music.

Dozens of commissioned and premiered works, a repertoire that goes through more than a hundred composers from around the world, with an important weight by Portuguese composers. If we add to this the consistent and regular phonographic editions, we realize how the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble has given an important contribution to the new contemporary creation and a decisive boost to the dissemination and circulation of Portuguese music today.

The group has been internationally highlighted as an example of artistic creation in the field of contemporary music that manages to combine the highest quality with a dynamic interpretation of the new musical creation, seeking the widest international projection as possible. As suggested by the name of the ensemble - Sond'Ar-te (that crosses the ideas of research, sound and art) - its job is, in short, to develop an artistic research, in close connection with the new technologies, trying to “test” the new musical paths (and defend music as an "art of sound"), to stimulate and to listen to Portuguese and international contemporary creation.

More information on Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemblesite at www.sondarte.com