bend (2026)
for chamber ensemble and electronics
written for and dedicated to the members of Ensemble Intercontemporain
Program note:
bend, for chamber ensemble and tape, is the latest piece in a series of works that explore live entanglements between performers, listeners, technologies, and acoustic space. Acting as a kind of time-based sonic sculpture, bend seeks to activate the performance space through the interaction between electronic and acoustic sound, creating sonic spatial conditions for embodied listening and emergent forms of perception. The work takes its name from the electronics: a field of programmed micro-fluctuations in an evolving mass of tuned sine tones that generate rhythmic beatings through minute variations in frequency. These beatings form a structural and perceptual through-line, gradually expanding from the electronic materials into the ensemble and the space itself.
The work moves between different treatments of time, from emergent textures within given durations to permeable time structures governed by resonance and decay, to dovetailing gestures between pairs of instruments moving in different temporal streams, to more traditional tempo driven sections. In addition to beating time in tempo-driven passages, the conductor acts as a facilitator of sonic relationships, guiding the circulation of sound through the performance space and mediating encounters between the ensemble, the electronic layer, and the acoustic environment.
Through techniques derived from modular synthesis, bend employs beatings via slowly evolving frequency relationships as compositional material, foregrounding phenomena that arise both within and beyond the sounding surface of the work. Furthermore, the electronics feature a processed tam tam sound that works in counterpoint with the otherwise purely electronic sound sources, inserting an organic envelope of decay into an otherwise architected synthetic one. This work was inspired by Karlheinz Stockhausen’s illuminations on pitch-rhythm relationships in How Time Passes, placed in conversation with Maryanne Amacher's investigations into psychoacoustics and auditory perception. Through these theoretical and technical approaches, this work aims to create a bodied listening experience for performers and audiences.
This piece was written for premier by Ensemble Intercontemporain with Gabriela Opacka-Boccadoro (1993, PL/UK) conducting at the Chiesa di S. Remigio, Loco (CH), 10.07.2026 for the International Young Composer’s Academy in Ticino, CH.