WNMD 2025 · DOUBLE BILL: CONCERTS 15 & 16
Cinema for the Ear #1 / Cinema para os ouvidos #1
04-06-2025 · 14h00 to 16h30
O’culto da Ajuda
Lisbon
Esgotado · Sold out
MISO MUSIC PORTUGAL LOUDSPEAKER ORCHESTRA
CONCERT #15
ANTÓNIO DE SOUSA DIAS (Portugal, 1959)
A Dama e o Unicórnio – Paisagem (2018), 8’
Sound diffusion: António de Sousa Dias
FILIPE ESTEVES (Portugal, 1978)
Rio Imaginário III (2024–2025), 8’ WP
Sound diffusion: Filipe Esteves
GILLES GOBEIL (Canada, 1954)
Un cercle hors de l'arbre (2014–2015), 10’
Individual submission
Sound diffusion: Gilles Gobeil
MANUELLA BLACKBURN (UK, 1984)
Home Truths (2023), 7’
Individual submission
Sound diffusion: Miso Studio
NATASHA BARRETT (UK, 1972)
Impossible Moments from Venice 3 / The Other Side of the Lagoon (2023), 10’
ISCM Norwegian Section submission
Sound diffusion: Natasha Barrett
—— intermission ——
CONCERT #16
ÂNGELA LOPES (Portugal, 1972)
Reciclo Recírculos – em forma de sanza (2019), 10’
Sound diffusion: Ângela Lopes
PANAYIOTIS KOKORAS (Greece, 1974)
Useless Box (2023), 13’
ISCM Stephen F. Austin State University submission
Sound diffusion: Miso Studio
ANNETTE VANDE GORNE (Belgium, 1946)
Vox Alia IV: Vox Populi (2023), 10’
individual submission
Sound diffusion: Annette Vande Gorne
YOUNGJAE CHO (South Korea, 1990) YCA
Mirrored: ceilings, floors, walls (2023), 9’
Individual submission
Sound diffusion: Youngjae Cho
ANTÓNIO FERREIRA (Portugal, 1962)
Escape Mechanism (2025), 11’ WP
Sound diffusion: António Ferreira
YCA · ISCM Young Composers Award candidate
WP · world premiere
[ENG]
The emblematic Loudspeaker Orchestra of Miso Music Portugal takes centre stage in a performance of ten acousmatic works by composers from different backgrounds and generations, bringing together established names and emerging voices.
This double concert features pieces by Portuguese composers António de Sousa Dias, Ângela Lopes, Filipe Esteves, and António Ferreira — with the latter two presenting world premières.
An unmissable opportunity to hear the Loudspeaker Orchestra in action at O'culto da Ajuda, in a programme where all the works are spatialised by the composers themselves, offering an immersive listening experience of today’s most current and vibrant electroacoustic creation.
Loudspeaker Orchestra – Miso Music Portugal
Created by Miso Music Portugal, the Loudspeaker Orchestra is a multichannel sound diffusion system designed for the performance of electroacoustic and acousmatic music. Comprising dozens of loudspeakers spatially distributed throughout the stage and audience area, allowing for dynamic and interpretative sound spatialisation tailored to the aesthetic and technical requirements of each work. It offers audiences an immersive and multidimensional listening experience.
Miso Music Portugal’s Loudspeaker Orchestra is a state-of-the-art instrument for electroacoustic music and is regularly used in concerts of the Música Viva Festival and in collaborations with both Portuguese and international composers. In addition to its artistic role, it also serves as a pedagogical and research tool in the field of electroacoustic music performance.
It had its first instalment in 1995 during the Música Viva Festival at São Luiz Municipal Theatre in Lisbon, and since then has been continuously refined and adapted. It had its major international appearance at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 2008 and is currently installed permanently at O’culto da Ajuda, in Lisbon.
[PT]
A emblemática Orquestra de Altifalantes da Miso Music Portugal é chamada à interpretação de dez peças acusmáticas de compositores de diferentes proveniências e gerações, juntando consagrados a compositores mais jovens. Um concerto duplo que inclui obras dos portugueses António de Sousa Dias, Ângela Lopes, Filipe Esteves e António Ferreira (estes dois com peças em estreia absoluta). Uma oportunidade para ouvir a Orquestra de Altifalantes em acção no O'culto da Ajuda, com obras todas elas espacializadas pelos próprios compositores, para uma escuta imersiva da novíssima criação electroacústica da actualidade.
Orquestra de Altifalantes da Miso Music Portugal
Concebida pela Miso Music Portugal, a Orquestra de Altifalantes é um sistema de difusão sonora multicanal concebido para a apresentação de música electroacústica e acusmática. Composta por dezenas de altifalantes distribuídos espacialmente entre o palco e a sala, permite uma espacialização sonora dinâmica e interpretativa, ajustada às exigências estéticas e técnicas de cada obra. Proporciona ao público uma experiência de escuta imersiva e multidimensional.
A Orquestra de Altifalantes da Miso Music Portugal é um instrumento de referência na performance de música electroacústica, sendo regularmente utilizada nos concertos do Festival Música Viva, bem como em colaborações com compositores portugueses e internacionais. Para além da sua função artística, constitui também uma ferramenta pedagógica e de investigação no domínio da interpretação da música electroacústica.
Foi apresentada pela primeira vez em 1995, durante o Festival Música Viva no Teatro Municipal São Luiz, em Lisboa, e desde então tem sido continuamente aperfeiçoada e desenvolvida. A sua grande estreia internacional teve lugar em 2008, no Festival de Outono de Varsóvia, e encontra-se actualmente instalada de forma permanente n’O’culto da Ajuda, em Lisboa.
PROGRAMME NOTES
ANTÓNIO DE SOUSA DIAS (Portugal, 1959)
A Dama e o Unicórnio – Paisagem (2018)
— A Dama e o Unicórnio - Paisagem can be regarded as an extension of the project A Dama e o Unicórnio, with poems by Maria Teresa Horta, which was initiated in 2009 and fully developed in 2013. In A Dama e o Unicórnio - Paisagem, electroacoustic materials are autonomised, reconfigured and relocated. The absence of the words, the absence of the voice, brings the soundscape to the foreground, and the evoked places are proposed as spaces for contemplation, offering themselves to our listening.
FILIPE ESTEVES (Portugal, 1978)
Rio Imaginário III (2024–2025) WP
— Imaginary River. The cycle Imaginary River emerged following a joint artistic residency with my colleague Nuno Morão at the "OSSO" association, held between September and October 2024. All the sound materials used in this cycle come from field recordings made along the Arnóia River (a river that rises in the Serra de Todo-o-Mundo and flows into the Óbidos Lagoon) during the residency. These field recordings include phonographic documentation of the "soundscapes" found along the river’s course, captured with an XY stereo microphone, as well as recordings of specific sound sources captured using a hydrophone and a contact microphone. For the composition of the pieces that form the cycle, I primarily used the sound materials captured by the hydrophone and the contact microphone — equipment that allowed the unveiling of a sonic world previously hidden and inaccessible to the human ear. The title Imaginary River refers to the fact that, at the time the recordings were made, the Arnóia River was practically dry upstream of the Óbidos dam (excluding, of course, the reservoir formed by the dam) and had only a small flow downstream. It was, therefore, a river in potential, one that found a possibility of existence (sonic, imaginary) within the pieces I composed.
GILLES GOBEIL (Canada, 1954)
Un cercle hors de l’arbre (2014–2015)
Individual submission
— To Flo Menezes. Inspired freely by the film La Jetée (1962) by Chris Marker (1921-2012). This movie tells the story of the survivors of a nuclear cataclysm where both the victors and the defeated are trapped underground due to deadly radiation. It gives food for thought in these uncertain times. Where do we stand today? And what if this scenario were prophetic? Un cercle hors de l’arbre was realized in the studios of PANaroma in São Paulo (Brazil). Acknowledgements go to the Canadian Council for the Arts (CCA) for support.
MANUELLA BLACKBURN (UK, 1984)
Home Truths (2023)
Individual submission
— Interruptions dominate this composition, acting as pauses, abrupt stops, moments cut short and held breaths. These moments represent the many interruptions experienced in my daily life, in work, activities and composing. Interruptions are temporal states where continuity is ceased but then resumed or returned to after the interrupting event is over. In this work, interruptions are positioned as the main event; acting as focal points and instances to explore the creative potential of these typically unwanted occurrences. There are many different types of interruptions constructed throughout the composition. These show the different outcomes between successful versus unsuccessful interruptions, those that form segues to those that forcefully threaten and break down sound’s continuous presence. This creative experimentation with many interruptions is set within the context of home life and home sounds. These sounds tell a story, imitating interruptions to flow, being in the home for extended periods and all this entails.
NATASHA BARRETT (UK, 1972)
Impossible Moments from Venice 3 / The Other Side of the Lagoon (2023)
ISCM Norwegian Section submission
— The Other Side of the Lagoon is the third composition in the Impossible Moments from Venice series. With one foot in reality, these compositions take the listener to a fictional location beyond the reach, as if in a dream state that nevertheless appears to be totally real. The watery reality of Venice, sinking into the muddy lagoon and threatened by the rising Adriatic, is counterpointed by curious sounds we rarely hear. These sounds are revealed by advanced signal processing methods that I developed during the Reconfiguring the Landscape artistic research project, aimed at exploring interesting features of the urban noise we are party to. The work draws on the sound of Venice before the tourists awaken, counterpointed by iron piers rolling on the waves, motorboats resonating across the Lagoon, and a sense decadence sitting uneasily against the reality of the rising tides.
ANTÓNIO FERREIRA (Portugal, 1962)
Escape Mechanism (2025) WP
— This is an acousmatic composition with all the expected aesthetic trappings: abstract sounds contrasted/ mingled with treated recorded sounds, in a continuous swirl of movement pointing to a possible escape from a troubled world… The continuous movement is realised by using small sounds, particles, which are sometimes source-recognizable and whose movement is achieved by a combination of energy (level) and frequency content (timbre) panning (with a sprinkle of Doppler shift). That means that the intrinsic sonic characteristics of the material guide the movement. Material with variable energy and frequency content was added or subtracted as desired to control the degree of spatial activity. Direct control of panning, eg. via envelopes was avoided. The work was originally conceived and mixed in Ambisonics 3o. There is some front dominance in the global perception of the space of the piece. This was intended.
ÂNGELA LOPES (Portugal, 1972), for fixed media (audio and video)
Reciclo Recírculos – em forma de sanza (2019)
— Reciclo-Recírculos – em forma de sanza is an audiovisual piece. The piece was commissioned by the DME Festival to be premiered in the context of the third edition of the Culture and Sustainability Symposium at the Lisboa Incomum. This is a soundscape work built on the idea of sustainability. The keywords are “reuse” (an inactive computer) and “recycle” (sound materials that return to life – converting waste sound materials into potentially useful sounds). ‘Recírculos’ in the title symbolises the circular and repetitive character, as in a loop, and ‘em forma de sanza’ in the subtitle refers to the presence of the sound of the African instrument – sanza. The difficulty in the composition was reconciling different levels of attention: the rhythmic and untempered nature of some of the materials with the melodic and tonal characteristics of others. It was imperative to reconcile the irreconcilable, merge and orchestrate their differences. The video is by the artist Inês Tartaruga Água. She says, “The video work explores the visual fluidity of water, its eternal cycles, and its constant recycling. Shot with an old hi8 home recorder camera handed to me by a family member, the reusing of this obsolete tool against the contemporary ones permits noise and signal saturation, which, together with light, sculpt forms in the water, creating movements and visual rhythms that, through this magical water algorithm, casually synchronise with the musical composition.”
ANNETTE VANDE GORNE (Belgium, 1946)
Vox Alia IV: Vox Populi (2023)
Individual submission
— ...Vox Dei? This short work combines human choral voices when a ritual brings them together and unifies them: from children’s games and their cries to those of demonstrators protesting in the public space, or even those of babies, to the litany ritual of communal prayers. Close to the spirit of the Hörspiel, it affirms the necessity of sound recording as the work’s basis, and consequently plays with degrees of image recognition (iconic or their imprints), to communicate with the listener’s imagination. Its form is a succession of small, different tableaux, all linked to the other parts of Vox Alia. The work was produced in 16 channels at the Musiques & Recherches Métamorphoses d'Orphée multiphonic studio in 2023. First performance: at the inaugural concert of the AVdG foundation on November 29, 2023, at the Espace Senghor, Brussels.
PANAYIOTIS KOKORAS (Greece, 1974)
Useless Box (2023)
Stephen F. Austin State University submission
— “The god Prometheus stole fire from heaven to give to the human race, which originally consisted only of men. To punish humanity, the other gods created the first woman, the beautiful Pandora. As a gift, Zeus gave her a box, which she was told never to open. However, as soon as he was out of sight she took off the lid, and out swarmed all the troubles of the world, never to be recaptured. Only Hope was left in the box, stuck under the lid. Anything that looks ordinary but may produce unpredictable harmful results can thus be called a Pandora's box.” Definition of “Pandora’s Box”. [Merriam-Webster]
The piece starts with the resonant knocking of a wooden box. At first, it sounds like an empty and useless box, but as it reveals its contents, it transforms from real to fantastical worlds, from Pandora’s box to Schrödinger's cat in a box thought experiment, and into places where the strange, the enigmatic, the amusing, the theatrical, and the terrifying all blend together, creating a story that is replete with vivid mental images and associations. Through a combination of spectromorphological and transcontextual manipulations, the sounds like emanating from the box take on a life of their own, becoming imbued with symbols, meanings, shapes, and forms. Each sound, from the eerie whistles to the booming thuds, has a distinct purpose and contributes to the piece in its own unique way. Useless Box both begins and ends with a quote from Entry of the Gladiators a military march composed by Julius Fučík in 1897. The box operates within a three-stage paradigm: Sense, Think, and Act. Equipped with an array of sensors including infrared, gyroscope, piezo, and switches, it transmits data to the Think part, which is a MaxMSP programme with machine listening capabilities. This component then controls the actuators, which make the third part, Act. Various physical computing and digital fabrication techniques were employed to fabricate the essential hardware for both sensors and actuators, which include a fan, pump, vape pen, motors, and lights.
YOUNGJAE CHO (South Korea, 1990) YCA
Mirrored: ceilings, floors, walls (2023)
Individual submission
— I concretize what I experience in everyday life, for example, a night sky with different star constellations or countless coloured books on the bookshelf. In this piece, I also imagined a room where the walls are completely covered with mirrors. These many multidimensional mirrors have a fascinating effect. The images, which change depending on the vantage point, seem to relate to the resonance and the sonic environment. This work is intended to be presented in a dome of loudspeakers version (3D-Version) or any multi channel version (16 Channel and 8 Channel) in the concert hall.