Mixed Music

Chaconne for Piano Trio and Electronics was composed during the first week of March 2020 in Thessaloniki as a part of metaξ project with LongLeash Trio in New York. The piece is largely based on the following poem written by Gundega Smite and Dimitris Maronidis. The piece is a Chaconne in the sense that the imaginary sound of breaking glass is reflected constantly in all musical gestures.

Mise en abîme is a term used in visual arts to describe a formal technique of placing a copy of an image within itself, often in a way that suggests an infinitely recurring sequence. A common way of experiencing this effect is by standing between two mirrors, seeing, as a result, an infinite reproduction of one’s image. In this piece, I try to imitate this phenomenon in the field of sound. Fragments of music are repeated many times, each time slightly distorted, in order to create perceptually the same effect.

Mise en abîme was commissioned by Arena Festivāls at Riga, Latvia, and was composed in Autumn of 2018. The premiere of the piece took place at VEF Cultural House in Riga on the 30th of October 2018 by Trio ART-i-Shock and Altera Veritas Ensemble collaborating for this unique concert.

Orbits is an electroacoustic piece for piano and tape and it was composed in 2014. The piece is dedicated to Gundega Smite who gave the premiere of the piece on July 2014 at Sigulda.

Orbit is the curved path of a celestial object or spacecraft around a star or planet. The eccentricity of the path and speed of the moving objects can vary. In this respect sound is treated in this piece as a moving object. Electronic and piano parts can be considered as two celestial objects moving either in regular trajectories or deviating from circularity.

I composed this piece many years ago after having first listened to Luigi Nono’s “Il canto sospeso”. I then tried hard and found a book in Italian with texts written in the prison by people condemned to death by Nazis. In these texts, written usually a few hours or minutes before of their execution, people of any age, were expressing their dreams and hopes for a new world. Their soul strength and their mental sobriety -just a few moments before they had to face death- had a strong impact on me. I was motivated and tried to express my feelings about their sacrifice and their beliefs… … a tutti loro… Thessaloniki, 2009

…a tutti loro performed by Christina Katidou