WNMD 2025 · CONCERT 17
Whispers and Echoes / Sussurros e ecos
04-06-2025 · 18h00
São Luiz Teatro Municipal, Sala Bernardo Sassetti
Lisbon
Bilheteira · Box Bilheteira (São Luiz)
Komorebi Duo
KOMOREBI DUO
Camila Mandillo · soprano
João Casimiro Almeida · piano
JIM O’LEARY (Canada, 1971)
Susan Pennefather Gray (2014–2015), 8’
Individual submission
FÁTIMA FONTE (Portugal, 1983)
Cartas Portuguesas (2020), 6’
ISCM Portuguese Section submission
EDUARDO LUÍS PATRIARCA (Portugal, 1970)
Livro dos Mantras em memória do Venerável Mestre Hsing Yun (2024), 6’
ANTÓNIO PINHO VARGAS (Portugal, 1951)
A Maior Tortura (2006), 6’
DANIEL OSORIO (Chile, 1971)
Zikkus-P (2010), 9’
ISCM Chile Section submission
ISABEL SOVERAL (Portugal, 1961)
Ciclo Shakespeare – Since Brass nor Stone (2007), 11’
ROBERT MCINTYRE (Australia, 1998) YCA
A Sea Spray of Ash (2019), 4’
ISCM Australian Section submission
YCA · ISCM Young Composers Award candidate
[ENG]
The Komorebi Duo will present a richly varied programme featuring works by composers from diverse and distant parts of the world, including Susan Pennefather Gray by Jim O’Leary (Canada), A Sea Spray of Ash by Robert McIntyre (Australia), and Zikkus-P by Daniel Osorio (Chile).
Alongside these international works, the concert will also feature music by Portuguese composers from different generations, ranging from António Pinho Vargas to Fátima Fonte, and including pieces by Isabel Soveral and Eduardo Luís Patriarca.
The Komorebi Duo consists of Camila Mandillo (soprano) and João Casimiro Almeida (piano).
Soprano Camila Mandillo, in addition to a growing number of performances in opera and chamber music, has been gaining increasing recognition for her interpretation of contemporary repertoire.
João Casimiro Almeida is one of the most acclaimed Portuguese pianists of his generation and has collaborated with several ensembles dedicated to the performance of new music.
[PT]
O Komorebi Duo apresentará um programa diversificado com obras de compositores de diferentes e distantes geografias, incluindo Susan Pennefather Gray de Jim O'Leary (Canadá), A Sea Spray of Ash de Robert McIntyre (Austrália) e Zikkus-P de Daniel Osorio (Chile). Para além destas peças, o concerto contará com composições de compositores portugueses de diferentes gerações, desde António Pinho Vargas a Fátima Fonte, passando por obras de Isabel Soveral e Eduardo Luís Patriarca.
O Komorebi Duo é composto por Camila Mandillo (soprano) e João Casimiro Almeida (piano). A soprano Camila Mandillo, para além de várias participações no campo da ópera e da música de câmara, tem vindo a ganhar notoriedade na interpretação de música contemporânea. João Casimiro Almeida é um dos mais conceituados pianistas portugueses da sua geração, tendo trabalhado com agrupamentos vários que se dedicam à música de hoje.
PROGRAMME NOTES
JIM O’LEARY (Canada, 1971)
Susan Pennefather Gray (2014–2015)
Individual submission
— Susan Pennefather Gray was commissioned for the PEI 2014 Sesquicentennial: celebrating the 150th anniversary of the meeting of the “Fathers of Confederation” in 1864 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Though her husband, Colonel John Hamilton Gray, was premier of PEI in 1864, I decided to focus my work on Susan Gray. I composed the music as if from her perspective; imagining that she was already quite ill at the time of the Charlottetown conference and unsure how much time she had left (she would eventually die on Nov. 12, 1866). Here was a woman at the centre of a seismic change in Canadian history, who was battling her illness while raising a family and supporting her husband’s political aspirations. The poem was chosen specifically for its stark religious imagery and sentiment: as if Susan Gray is talking directly to her God in her time of need.
FÁTIMA FONTE (Portugal, 1983)
Cartas Portuguesas (2020)
ISCM Portuguese Section submission
— The text of this song comprises fragments from a collection of letters with the same name, Cartas Portuguesas (Portuguese Letters), written by a Portuguese nun (Mariana Alcoforado) in the 17th century. Following a short love affair with a French official and his departure to various missions at the service of the French king, Mariana wrote five passionate and confessional love letters. Starting with unconditional surrender to love and sensuality, the lack of mutuality inspires an increasingly bitter and hopeless tone. The fragments I chose to set revolve around writing as release – “I write more for myself than for you; I seek nothing but relief” – and the frustration with his confession of indifference – “I loathe your honesty. Why did you not leave me with my passion?” The music uses the Hindustani raag Basant and draws inspiration from ornaments used in Hindustani music.
EDUARDO LUÍS PATRIARCA (Portugal, 1970)
Livro dos Mantras em memória do Venerável Mestre Hsing Yun (2024)
— The Book of Mantras is part of a relatively long cycle, the Cycle of Books. Like all the other pieces in the cycle, it reflects on a particular aspect of Buddhism, especially the Mahayana branch, through the practices and teachings of Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan Buddhism. In the Book of Mantras, in addition to the concept of Mantra, melodic and textual formula, the specific practice of Shômyô singing (声明), developed in Japanese Zen Buddhism (direct heir to Chinese Ch'an), is applied, in which each member sings in their own tuning and with melismas improvised by themselves, which causes harmonic and contrapuntal processes of great complexity. This piece can have several versions, including electronics and oriental percussion instruments, as well as the possibility of overlapping several voices. The version used here is for solo voice. Everything that comes close to Shômyô is proposed for performance in a creative relationship between the composer and the performer.
DANIEL OSORIO (Chile, 1971)
Zikkus-P (2010)
ISCM Chile Section submission
— Zikkus-P confronts the sikuri ensembles’ playing with two symbols of European musical tradition par excellence: the piano, the symbol of European high culture and individual performance, and electroacoustic music, the trademark of the European avant-garde. These elements are juxtaposed with the social significance of the sikuri’s collective music-making, which plays a fundamental role in shaping Andean sound aesthetics. The piece attempts to break the piano’s symbolism and limited tonal possibilities by dismantling its sound spectrum – on the one hand, via electronics and on the other, by striking its resonating body with various everyday objects. In this way, new types of sound spectra are generated, allowing the acoustic elements and aesthetic values of Andean music shine through.
ISABEL SOVERAL (Portugal, 1961)
Ciclo Shakespeare – Since Brass nor Stone (2007)
— In Since brass nor Stone... the proximity between the acoustic and the electronics world – so characteristic of the previous cycle - is defined by the landscape of the electronics that background and embraces the dramatic sense that Shakespeare down in the sonnet. The dialogue between the solo voice and the transformed recorded voice is always there creating a single sound matrix. The electronics create a sound field with a space and harmonic configuration complementary to that presented by the soprano part. The intersection points between electronics and the voice are frequent, marking the key moments of the formal geography of the piece. This piece went through several phases of composition. During the first phase, the nuclear material was worked up from the sonnet and its evolution was planned in a way that was still quite abstract. Before the development of musical discourse, my work passed by the decoding of "images" trapped in the memory of reading the sonnet, "remains that are crystallized". The emotional reading of the original text led me to a very concrete perception of a possible musical discourse taking into account the necessary mediation process between the dimensions of time and space. The material developed, essentially, through the expansion of its concrete musical characteristics, contributing, from the beginning, to the expressive quality or identity, which will be present in the final achievement of the work. In this case, the unity principle does not search a uper control; on the contrary, it tries to create nuclei, formants, which will manifest themselves differently as they interact with each other.
ROBERT MCINTYRE (Australia, 1998) YCA
A Sea Spray of Ash (2019)
ISCM Australian Section submission
— A Sea Spray of Ash is work for solo soprano with minimal yet reverberant piano accompaniment, confronting the issue of environmental collapse, which poses a sobering threat to our existence. lt conveys a narrative of ash covering the shores, natural disasters, and a reminiscent moment of when the Earth was pure, right before a solemn caution to not silence its desperate plea for survival. This work was composed during and inspired by the emergence of the 2019 Global Climate Crisis Strikes. lt calls for further action, exponentially increasing in relevance as time passes on, while the urgency of the climate crises exacerbates.