For accordion, percussion and live dispositive.
Commissioned by IRCAM and the Centre Georges Pompidou
Urbana. Adj. relating to the city. Plural noun
Urbana (plural noun) is a cycle of 24 works which are linked together by the concern about space, the place of the concert, the culture of the cities, emblematic cities, architecture, the archeology of the sign.
Urbana (adjective) for accordion, percussion and live dispositive is the work in which these topics were made explicit in relation to the city, to the urban. It, somehow, is the key piece of a larger, multiform building in which the points of contact between the different stages (the works) are a way of interweaving the work through the years.
Architecture is often said to be frozen music. Urbanism would, thus, be a subject (a science?) which tries to organize a kind concert which is fixed in space and animated by human presence.
This work takes on the sound projection space. It is inscribed in the current problematic of urban space and its implications for the contemporary creator: social space, art’s space within the city.
The work is integrated by nine chained sections which are intimately linked with my hometown: La Plata (made out of figures, crosses and precise proportions.)
To put the accordion (bandoneon’s older brother) and percussion in the foreground has a lot to do with the musical matter of the work.
Time is relaxed and multiple, in the image and likeness of our city lives. In this way, an oscillation of hearing is generated. It is active or abstract, contemplative or fast. Matter is plentiful and sometimes almost still. Like a rodeo in the city, our attitude indistinctly goes from being distant and observable to becoming a participant.
