Chicago based ensemble Fonema Consort performs works by Costa Rican composers Pablo Santiago Chin and Mauricio Pauly that stretch vocal chamber music into new and highly expressive territory, lending new poignancy and immediacy to gestures traditionally associated with the avant garde.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 52:47 | |||
| 01 | Sólo es real la niebla (2011) | Sólo es real la niebla (2011) | Dalia Chin, flute, Nina Dante, soprano | 9:27 |
| 02 | Dust Unsettled (2012-13) | Dust Unsettled (2012-13) | Ann Yi, piano, Nathalie Colas, soprano, Felix Del Tredici, trombone, Ryan Packard, percussion, Shawn Lucas, electric guitar, Tommy Mesa, cello | 8:14 |
| 03 | Boschiana (2013) | Boschiana (2013) | Ann Yi, piano, Nina Dante, soprano, Will Fergason, saxophone | 9:18 |
| 04 | 7 Studies on Chapter 34 (2012) | 7 Studies on Chapter 34 (2012) | Nina Dante, soprano | 9:34 |
| 05 | vs. el monopolio de la memoria (2013) | vs. el monopolio de la memoria (2013) | Ann Yi, piano, Will Fergason, saxophone, Ellen McSweeney, violin | 10:30 |
| 06 | Como la leyenda de Ixquiq (2009) | Como la leyenda de Ixquiq (2009) | Dalia Chin, flute, Eliza Bangert, flute | 5:44 |
This recording of music by Costa Rican composers Mauricio Pauly and Pablo Chin performed by Chicago based Fonema Consort explores the boundaries of form—where structures are endangered by the very tensions that sustain them—and of meaning—where words verge on pure sound and where musical sound is itself loosed from its conventional moorings. Fonema Consort, founded in 2011 by Chin and singer Nina Dante, is an ensemble devoted to expanding the repertoire for voice and ensemble and is the perfect vehicle for these works that place avant garde gestures traditionally reserved for instrumental writing into the ultimate human context, the voice. Text setting also plays a central role in this disc, with poetry by such figures as Octavio Paz and Lawrence Ferlinghetti shaping the expressive landscape for the compositions. Whether or not Chin and Pauly reflect a shared Costa Rican aesthetic is a question for the critics to answer, but certainly their penchant for prioritizing the visceral gesture over a systematic treatment of material indicates a common sensibility, especially in their vocal writing. The result is that despite the music's obvious sophistication, it hits the emotions before the mind, albeit in surprising and altogether unpredictable ways. The interesting dichotomy between "instrumental" and "vocal" material and the way this music challenges those boundaries reveals itself in the first minutes of the opening track, Solo es real la niebla, where soprano Nina Dante shifts back and forth between swooping melismatic treatments of the text, imitative textures with the ensemble, and extended vocal techniques. Even when Ms. Dante sings material that is "instrumental" in character, the physicality of her voice adds an extra layer of expression. In Pauly's Dust Unsettled, this dichotomy is underscored, as the vocalist's extreme roles shift according to the section of the composition, traveling through distant timbres in the chamber texture, text recitation, and fragments of poignant song. Chin's and Pauly's experimental approaches strive to break through conventional ways of hearing to reach a more direct expression of powerful and complex emotion.
Read MoreChicago based ensemble Fonema Consort performs works by Costa Rican composers Pablo Santiago Chin and Mauricio Pauly that stretch vocal chamber music into new and highly expressive territory, lending new poignancy and immediacy to gestures traditionally associated with the avant garde. These works also explore the boundaries of form—where structures are endangered by the very tensions that sustain them—and of meaning—where words verge on pure sound and where musical sound is itself loosed from its conventional moorings. Fonema Consort, founded in 2011 by Chin and singer Nina Dante, is an ensemble devoted to expanding the repertoire for voice and ensemble and is the perfect vehicle for these works that place avant garde gestures traditionally reserved for instrumental writing into the ultimate human context, the voice. Text setting also plays a central role in this disc, with poetry by such figures as Octavio Paz and Lawrence Ferlinghetti shaping the expressive landscape for the compositions.
Whether or not Chin and Pauly reflect a shared Costa Rican aesthetic is a question for the critics to answer, but certainly their penchant for prioritizing the visceral gesture over a systematic treatment of material indicates a common sensibility, especially in their vocal writing. The result is that despite the music’s obvious sophistication, it hits the emotions before the mind, albeit in surprising and altogether unpredictable ways. The interesting dichotomy between “instrumental” and “vocal” material and the way this music challenges those boundaries reveals itself in the first minutes of the opening track, Solo es real la niebla, where soprano Nina Dante shifts back and forth between swooping melismatic treatments of the text, imitative textures with the ensemble, and extendedvocal techniques. But because the voice is so directly connected to a universal experience, even when Ms. Dante sings material that is “instrumental” in character, we hear an extra layer of expression because of our empathy with her physicality. In Pauly’s Dust Unsettled, this dichotomy is underscored, as the extreme roles the vocalist is placed in shift according to the section of the composition, traveling through distant timbres in the chamber texture, spoken word, and brief fragments of poignant song. Chin and Pauly’s experimental approach strives to break through conventional ways of hearing to reach a more direct expression of powerful and sometimes quixotic emotion.
Recorded at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago by Alex Inglizian
Edited by Pablo Santiago Chin and Mauricio Pauly
Mixed and Mastered by Alex Inglizian
Produced by Pablo Santiago Chin
Photography by Marc Perlish
Artwork and design by Ben Knight
Mauricio Pauly's practice combines composition for hybrid instrumental/electronic ensembles, sound design, and live performance. As an active cross-disciplinary collaborator, his work includes numerous projects with writers, designers, programmers and theatre-makers.
His music has been featured by festivals that include Ultima Festival (Norway, 2011), Warsaw Autumn (Poland, 2013), Darmstadt International Summer Courses (Germany, 2010/12/14/16), Le Bruit de la Musique (France, 2014), Images Sonores Festival (Belgium, 2015), Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik (Austria, 2016) and Open Ears Festival (Canada 2018).
Recent collaborations include live-performed music and sound design for Athina Rachel Tsangari’s production of Wedekind's LULU in a sold-out 10-show run at the 2017 Salzburg Festival. FREAM AD WALL, written in collaboration with programmer and 3D animator, Gabriel Montagné, was performed by Line Upon Line Percussion as a 3-show premiere in Austin, TX and toured Europe and the UK in Fall 2019. His latest work, The Difference is the Buildings Between Us #3, was premiered in 2020 by No Hay Banda in Montreal.
Pauly spent the summer of 2018 as an awarded Artist Fellow at Civitella Ranieri (Umbria, Italy). In 2017 he was Composer-in-Residence at Villa Romana (Florence, Italy) undertaking a two-part creation and performance residency. During 2014-2015 he relocated to Cambridge, MA (US) thanks to a year-long fellowship at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Pauly is a founding member of UK-based ensemble, Distractfold.
Pauly is an Assistant Professor at SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts in Vancouver, Canada. Previously, he taught at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK (2007-2020) and at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, UK (2011-2019). He has given workshops and masterclasses at McGill University, New York University, Brussels Royal Conservatory, Bath Spa University and Huddersfield University among others.
Since 2017, his home and studio are in Vancouver, Canada.
http://www.mauriciopauly.comconsort: a group of instrumentalists and singers performing together
fonema: (Spanish, phoneme) the smallest unit of speech, which distinguishes words according to their sonic quality.
These concepts define the essence of Fonema Consort as they commission, perform, and record new music that explores the possibilities of the human voice in an avant garde chamber setting. Known for their “enthusiastic embrace of daring new music” (Chicago Reader) Fonema is driven by a fascination with pieces that foster rich interplay of voices and instruments and that are characterized by deep expressivity. The ensemble is highly committed to presenting works by Latin American composers to US audiences and encouraging musical exchange between these regions.
http://www.fonemaconsort.comThe music of Pablo Chin, a Costa Rican composer based in Chicago, engages with self-designed methods that aid in generating sophisticated polyphony, and that reveal unforeseen musical trajectories. These methods derive from the composer’s concerns with the role of calculation and intuition in his work. Recent works draw inspiration from the narratives of film and literature, phonetic structures in text, and the exploration of iconic Latin rhythms and metrical spaces.
Chin’s music has been performed in 11 countries and across the U.S. states. He has been commissioned by Ensemble Recherche, International Contemporary Ensemble, members of the Anubis Quartet, the MAVerick Ensemble, Chicago Humanities Festival, Latino Music Festival of Chicago, Claremont Concert Orchestra and ensemble dal niente among others. His music has also been performed by artists including Ostravská Banda, Donatienne Michel-Dansac, Pierre-Stéphane Meugé, Marino Formenti, Claire Chase, Eric Lamb, Gan Lev and Marcus Weiss.
Chin earned his doctoral degree in composition from Northwestern University, where he has been awarded the Cacavas Award, William T. Faricy Award, and William Karlins Award. There he studied with Hans Thomalla, Jay Alan Yim, and Aaron Cassidy. In master classes he has worked with Richard Barrett, Oliver Knussen, Chaya Czernowin, and Kaija Saariaho among others. His music has been commissioned for and performed in prestigious international festivals of new music, including the 45th and 46th Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, Ostrava Days 2009, and Centre Acanthes 2011. Currently Chin teaches theory, aural skills and composition at Saint Xavier University, and is co-founder and artistic director of Fonema Consort. Chin was recently awarded the Dotacion Musical from Costa Rica’s ACAM, to fund the production of his first album, to be released in the Spring of 2014.
http://www.pablochin.comForward-looking new-music ensembles dedicated to the work of living composers, especially young ones, seem to be proliferating unstoppably in Chicago these days. The likes of Ensemble dal Niente, Fifth House Ensemble, and Eighth Blackbird regularly perform pieces written for vocalists, but Fonema Consort has distinguished itself by focusing on vocal music. Costa Rican composer Pablo Santiago Chin and singer Nina Dante founded the group with composer Edward Hamel in 2011, and it's already become an important creative force in the city. All six works on Fonema's dazzling new album, Pasos en Otra Calle (New Focus), are by Chin or fellow Costa Rican Mauricio Pauly (now based in London), but the group's enthusiastic embrace of daring new music extends well beyond its founders and their associates: it's also performed music by Chicago-based composers such as Marcos Balter, Morgan Krauss, and Daniel Dehaan as well as rigorous pieces from the likes of Ferneyhough, Aperghis, and Webern. Fonema doesn't always feature voices, but Dante and French expat Nathalie Colas, the group's two imaginative singers, ensure that the pieces that do are highlights of its lively and varied concerts.
-Peter Margasak
This ensemble has changed my thinking on contemporary classical vocal music. The dynamic performances of Fonema's singers, Nina Dante and Nathalie Colas, complement conventional operatic passages with dazzling extended techniques, providing as much of the music's color and texture as the bold instrumental parts do. On its debut album, the group focuses on new work by one of its cofounders, Pablo Chin, and a fellow Costa Rican, London-based composer Mauricio Pauly; most of the pieces incorporate Spanish-language texts by the likes of Octavio Paz and Julio Cortázar, whose images and ideas the music echoes and refracts. - Peter Margasak
New Focus Recordings is an artist led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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