PLAY

Formation: alto saxophone, e-guitar, trombone, drumset + audiovisual projection
Creation: august-november 2022
Duration: ca. 18 min.
Premiere: 23-11-2022. PHONOS (Barcelona). Ensemble Delirium

“… if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering”
(Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World”)

PLAY belongs to a new series of four long pieces —STOP, PLAY, PAUSE and LOOP—. Common to all four pieces is a put into question, from the aesthetic experience of sound, of our present consumption habits, particularly the ones related to our way to consume culture and art.
PLAY takes as main instrument a small mixed ensemble (a kind of pop-rock formation) and a fake music streaming platform, which is projected in real time in different settings. The material of the piece is constituted by more than 100 excerpts and transcriptions of real existing music of several styles.
PLAY develop through several compositional paths, all based in our consumption of digital music: the ordering of music according to functional playlists, the urge to play and hear music 24 hours a day, the recommendation algorithms of streaming platforms or the 5 seconds skipping behaviour that the overabundance of contents promotes.