Ottetto

Riccardo Nova: Ottetto (2012)
für vier Saxofone, vier Schlagzeuger:innen und Elektronik
for four saxophones, four percussionists and electronics

Teilnehmer:innen der Darmstädter Ferienkurse
Participants of the Darmstadt Summer Course

Patrick Stadler (Saxofon / Saxophone Studio), Jennifer Torrence & Håkon Stene (Percussion Studio) (Musikalische Leitung / Musical Direction)

Riccardo Nova is a wanderer between two worlds: Born, raised and educated in Italy, he has also lived and worked in India since the early 1990s. There he studied mainly South Indian music and percussion. From this confrontation of different practices and ways of thinking, the composer developed a hybrid notation system that also repeatedly incorporates longer improvised passages. The composer describes his 2012 octet for four saxophones, four percussionists and electronics as a “meditation on breathing in and out (pranam), a slow oscillation between two states, a hypnotically recurring movement that can speed up, slow down or remain constant. Cyclically, a more or less obvious change emerges, a new direction, a question, followed by an answer if possible – or simply a second question. […] In the Vedic tradition, a (poetic) meter was considered a precious gift, a tool that could be used to achieve a goal, or even a weapon of destruction.”