On having played with time
Electronic music, 10 minutes, with 5 minute Prelude.

Composed by Utsyo Chakraborty (Ensemble) and Paul* Hermansen (Electronics).

“A week ago, I received this message from Paul*:

“Hi! I'd like to propose a collaboration!
I'm doing a piece with Bela Pruscini right now where I write an orchestra sketch and she, independently, writes some electronic music and in the end, we cut it together somehow.
Now I was thinking I'd love to do a piece with you where we do it the other way around, I write the electronic music, and you write something for ensemble or orchestra, how does that sound?”

It took me a split second to accept their proposal. However, I had no idea what kind of music I would write. Paul was quick enough to send me two contrasting sketches and that immediately set off a trail of ideas to work with. Listening to the whimsical and almost extra-terrestrial nature of Paul*’s second sketch (I refused to work with the first one on grounds of it being so good as a self-contained piece that it did not need my music!), I decided to compose a part which would engage in a symbiotic relationship with the computer music; something which could enhance the mood the sketch was trying to capture, while sometimes contradicting it in places.
The chamber part is composed for an ensemble of 11 players: one piccolo, bass clarinet and contrabassoon each, an electric piano (doubling on celesta), three percussionists and a string trio. The harmonic material of the music has been derived from some all-interval twelve-note chords which Elliott Carter had systematized in his Harmony Book. The piece is laid out in four sections, one leading into another and each having its own characteristic feature: the first, jazz-inflected and percussive; the second featuring melodic lines interspersed with high string harmonics; the third focussing on synchronized, multi-layered, poly-rhythmic repetition and the fourth, in which time seems to be suspended altogether. “

- UC. 23/12/22

“I proposed this collaboration to Bela and Utsyo after having listened to Christophe Guiraud and Laszlo Umbreit’s collaborative soundtrack for “der letzte Mann”, being very intrigued by the concept of a collaboration between two composers where they both write out something independent of one another and integrate the fragments after the fact, forming a quasi-improvised third, new thing out of the two composed halfs in the moment. Utsyo’s music has fascinated me for a long time now, his musical oeuvre showing a mastery of many 20th century styles and beyond! Since I wanted to be on both sides of this electro-ensemble collaboration project, asking Utsyo for the chamber part was a no-brainer for me, being well acquainted with his output and utterly thrilled to get to work with him.
After asking him if he would like a rather sparse or dense tape part, I went to work and improvised with some folk music samples and some prerecorded sound objects I had generated with an ARP 2600 syntheiszer as well as concantenative and granular synthesis.
To accentuate the symbiotic nature of the electronic/ensemble dynamic I decided to play with gradual transformations of concrete into abstract sounds and vice versa, creating a surrealist suspension in which an oscillator doesn’t sound more out of place than a east african thumb piano, an amen break, hindustani instruments or throat singing.
When I received the orchestra part Utsyo had written, I could not believe my ears. The results of this fairly quick and fun collab surpassed my wildest expectations”

P*H 23/12/2022