Presentation by Raquel García-Tomás and Alberto Chaves (SIGMA Project soloist)

Concert: My Old Gramophone #4 (2021)

Conversation between composers Helga Arias & Raquel García-Tomás. Approaches to collaboration between composer and performer

Musical Tip: Shelling My old gramophone #4, by Ángel Soria

My Old Gramophone #4 (2021) for saxophone quartet and electronics
Work commissioned by Centro Nacional de Difusión Musical-CNDM/INAEM
World premiere 18/01/2021 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid). Cycle Series 20/21 of the Centro Nacional de Música-CNDM

Inspired by early 20th-century jazz, My Old Gramophone #4 (for saxophone quartet and electronics) is the fourth work in the My Old Gramophone series, which evokes the act of listening to a gramophone through to the “mechanization” of the performers. Such mechanization is achieved by playing the errors that normally occur in this type of devices, such as the skipping of the needle producing the repetition of a short fragment (what today we would call a loop), the change of pitch due to the slowing down of the motor or the alteration of timbre because of dust or the deterioration of the record. As the work progresses, these errors will move from being perceived as faults to being absorbed into the musical discourse.

+ info: Raquel García-Tomás