New Music Forum 2026: Depth of Space
Program
Instaurateur and co-author of the music: Mauricio Valdés San Emeterio
Co-authors and performers:
Erik Drescher (flute)
Tilen Lebar (saxophones)
Jaka Berger (Brgs) (percussion and electronics)
Luka Juhart (accordion)
Alastair McNeill Brown (Yila) (voice)
Jošt Drašler (double bass)
Urška Centa (stage performance)
Urška Rihtaršič (harp)
Karmen Ponikvar (prepared piano)
Åke Parmerud (source of the video scores and acousmatic composition)
Francesco Scarel (live visual effects)
Jan Krmelj (printed libretto and offstage voice)
Like the post-revolutionary murals of Orozco and Siqueiros, the operetta can be read from two perspectives: as a densely populated surface teeming with voices, and as a constellation of individual figures that emerge when we move closer to the work.
The first act of Migrations VII draws on a series of works without a written score. In its place is an electroacoustic composition that the musicians learn by listening. Each of the six musicians independently recorded their own interpretation of this score. The result is an ensemble that has never played together, heard through an octophonic ring of loudspeakers surrounding the audience and a spherical loudspeaker on stage, while the score itself remains concealed. At intervals, fragments of a sermon in Spanish emerge, delivered by a priest of the Santa Muerte (Holy Death) cult, which has all but disappeared today.
In the intermezzo, the field contracts to a single, thin line. Urška Centa sets four metronomes in motion. Placed on a board resting on tin cans, they gradually synchronise of their own accord through the shared surface. If the first act presents us with an ensemble whose members have never met, here we draw closer to a single sonic object whose distinct sources gradually become discernible as they converge on a common pulse, without a conductor. Centa then begins to perform on a surface fitted with piezoelectric pickups. Her amplified flamenco dance builds in intensity until it dissolves into sound.
The second act follows attacca: a harpist and an accordionist perform live from video scores devised by Valdés from Åke Parmerud’s Faust Variations, a new acousmatic composition based on the finale of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Once again, however, Parmerud’s original sound material remains unheard. In the third act, the ambisonic sound field finally expands, and the duo improvises within it, revealing the process that underlies the work as a whole.
The title distinguishes between an address that expresses urgency—a demand for recognition—and one that concerns capacity: the willingness to receive an address from elsewhere and respond to it without needing to be seen. The source moves from concealment into audibility, while the evening’s first visible body ultimately dissolves into sound once more. The performers are credited as co-authors, while Valdés takes the role of instaurateur, in the sense given to the term by Étienne Souriau: one who responds to a work that calls to be brought into existence, rather than commanding its creation.
Produced by: Kulturno izobraževalno društvo PiNA
Commissioned and co-produced by: Društvo UHO / Forum nove glasbe 2026
Find out more about the 2026 New Music Forum at ljnmf.org.