Voice and Cello (Black Box, 24.4.2019), was tailored around the voice and cello performer Anni Elif Egecioglu. It had a more intimate dimension, with works from the repertoire for voice and cello – Peter Eötvös’ Two Poems to Polly, Jovanka Trbojevic’s Sky Shopping - Hommage to Brahms, Peter Ablinger’s Voices and Piano (Kati Outinen, Hanna Schygulla, Orson Welles).
It included my acousmatic work Migramare (2016), based on the voices of migrants from Syria and Iraq, telling the stories of their travels via the Balkan route. It was a new version made with Ambisonics, made during the workshop Nordic+Mix in Vilnius (2018).
The new piece Between words and life, based on poems by Gülten Akin, included voice and cello, ¼ tone accordeon, ensemble (six instruments) and electronics.
This time the performative part was extended to a dancer/choreographer (Suvi Tuominen), who played in duo with Anni, and as a soloist; and to Marek as a video performer – visible on stage and interacting with Anni and Suvi.
The stage was doubled: half of Black Box was used as flat, half with stairs for the seats. The front stage was used by the three performers, the rear stage by the ensemble – Anni was so to say ‘amphibious’, playing in both spaces and in between them.
My focus during the compositional work was the relation between Anni’s spoken and singing voice (in her native languages, Turkish and Swedish, and in English) and her instrument, cello. I worked the voice and cello samples, merging them timbrically, and looking for interesting sonorities in between voice and instrument. In a part of the piece I used live resonances created with Modalys, on Anni’s speaking voice – combined with layers of Anni’s spoken voice stretched samples and a light orchestration based on their partials.
I also worked with Anni and Suvi’s interaction in the introduction of the piece, where they interact in an improvisational way, Anni using her voice and body, and Suvi listening and interacting bodily – the idea was to create slow circles of voice and bodily movements, as if to map a territory, create a space, and set the tone of the piece.
I collaborated with Marek to co-create the content of the visual part: we chose together elements derived from the poems - for ex. the metaphor of a bird setting itself free – we used images of flocks of migratory birds; and the act of writing, where we used black ink on glass.
It was also a performative process: Marek filmed my hands writing parts of the poems on a glass surface, illuminated below. We did multiple versions, and at the end I started using my fingers to spread the ink, at first writing a word, then blurring it in an abstract way.
Combining the material, it became evident the relation between the dark abstract-like images of the flying birds (with their variable geometries) and the ink writing. Marek improvised with the material live. He added another layer, filming the performers and treating their projections, while interacting with them.
Anni and Suvi were carrying long tubes containing small projectors, that they could direct either on the floor and the audience (during the introduction) or on the screen and the musicians – and on each other (for this reason they wore a white costume, especially designed by Esme Karakaya).
Once more we decided to have an unconventional screen for the projections: instead of the half-sphere, which would have taken a big portion of the floor space, Marek proposed the idea of a sort of sail, hanging from the ceiling on the musicians and part of the front scene. The mostly black and white projections showed on it elegantly and gave the images the curved shape that I had been longing for. Some projections were directed also on the floor and on the musicians (dressed in white too).
Keywords: voices, (human and animal) migrations, merging/timbre, round/curve shapes, ink/writing, co-creating/co-performing.
Imaginary Spaces 2016
Paola Livorsi, composition and sound design
Juho Latinen, cello and sound design
Roberto Fusco (Pugliese) live electronics and sound design
Marek Pluciennik, live processed video
Sampo Pyhälä, stage design
Jukka Kolimaa, light design
Olli Keskinen, Marko Myöhänen, sound engineers
Imaginary Spaces 2020
Paola Livorsi, composition and sound design
Juho Latinen, cello and sound design
Juan de Dios Magdaleno, live electronics and sound design
Marek Pluciennik, live processed video
Sampo Pyhälä, stage and light design
Viktor Toikkanen, sound engineer