Sébastien Boin, director of the ensemble C Barré, invited Francisco Alvarado to compose a piece dedicated to robotics, part of a program that will be presented at the Festival Les Musiques 2020 and then at the festival Manifeste 2020 in Paris, organized by IRCAM
The main objects of the piece will be the voice and artificial intelligence.
"The main idea will be to stage a synthesized voice, which questions its identity and tries to become autonomous, intelligent. If at the beginning of the play this voice will only read a text written beforehand, at the end it will say an original text generated by the machine using the AI. The piece will be divided into three parts:
a) an initial speech centered on the question of identity which is deconstructed at the semantic level and then at the phonetic level
b) an intermediate passage based on the particles of sound which became the voice, without semantics, there remains only the timbre and
c) a new speech generated by the machine starting from the constraints and in relation to the initial speech and the thematic of the piece It is not excluded that this last part explores other types of expression than speech, imagining that the machine would be able to invent a new language, different to those we know.
The ensemble of 12 musicians will interact with this voice in various ways, but mostly as a metaphor for the physical body that this voice does not possess. Quite freely, the ensemble will act as a complement to what the voice is saying.
In the first part, the instrumental sounds will underline the deconstruction of the speech, intervening at the beginning in an abrupt way and settling down little by little while the semantic coherence of the speech is lost.
In the second part, the ensemble will mix with the sounds of the voice, exploring timbres and rhythms, starting from the remains of the voice transformed into small phonetic cells.
Finally, in the third part, the ensemble will accompany the generation of the new speech of the voice, in a counterpoint that develops in parallel, creating a layer of meaning that is superimposed on that of the word." - Francisco Alvarado
Fransisco Alvarado
composer
Francisco Alvarado's work is marked by the exploration of timbre through the manipulation and instrumentation of complex sounds that, varied and transformed, are projected in time trying to constitute a poetic and living musical discourse.
The integration of the scenic space and the body of the performers as perceptive parameters, the use of electronics as an extension of the sonorities of the instruments or the exploration of bridges between the written score and improvisation, are the guidelines of his musical approach.
He studied composition at the Universidad Católica de Chile, then at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, in the class of Stefano Gervasoni. The encounter with Gervasoni, as well as with other composers such as Alberto Posadas, Philippe Manoury, Hèctor Parra or Brian Ferneyhough, were very important to shape a personal language and an original musical project. Between 2013 and 2015 he attended the Cursus 1 & 2 courses at Ircam, in Paris.
He regularly collaborates with artists of his generation, conceiving projects that join common issues. He has worked with Florentin Ginot, Angèle Chemin, Marie-Claudine Papadopoulos, Carlos Franklin, Standardmodell, Achtung, the ensembles C Barré, Linéa, Maja and the theater company La Phenomena, among others.
He was a laureate of the Academy of Festival Musica and received the CMDC prize at the INJUVE Academy in Madrid. These pieces have been commissioned by the Royaumont Foundation, the Diotima Quartet, the Conservatoire National de Musique et de Danse de Paris, the Messiaen Festival, the United Instruments of Lucilin, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, the Ensemble C Barré, the GMEM, Ircam and the Festival Musica. He was artist-in-residence at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis in 2017 and with the Lucilin Ensemble, SWR ExperimentalStudio and GMEM in 2019.
REPORT
March 9 - 15
April 27 - 30
Francisco Alvarado
composer
Charles Bascou
computer music director