Pictures of the Floating World
Percussion duo, saxophone, pre-recorded electronics and video
Year: 2017 | Duration: 19 min.~
Premiered by Neopercusión (Juanjo Guillem, Rafa Gálvez, Iván Ferrer) and Xelo Giner.
Venue: Teatro Galileo
Commissioned by INAEM 2017
Blind Contours no. 1
Ensemble, pre-recorded electronics and video
Year: 2016 | Duration: 13 min.
Premiered by the Oslo Sinfonietta
Venue: L'Auditori de Barcelona - Sampler Series
Commissioned by OSIC (Oficina de Suport a la Iniciativa Cultural)
Blind Contours no. 1 (2016) is a multidisciplinary work that involves an ensemble of 16 musicians, pre-recorded electronics and video. It was commissioned by the Sàmpler Series as a work to be premiered by the Oslo Sinfonietta on 21 May 2016.
The term blind contour is associated with an illustration technique that consists of outlining an object without looking at the paper. Although it is commonly used as a drawing exercise for students –as it develops observational skills and avoids the repetition of memorised drawing shapes– this practice offers expressive and relatively unexpected results that also attract professional illustrators. Given the fact that the graphical result cannot be checked while drawing, this artistic technique entails a significant degree of randomness. Blind Contours no. 1 reflects this in the musical discourse by including chance proceedings within a controlled framework.
[logolepsy / lethologica]
radiophonic work
Year: 2016
Electronics
World premiered: 17 January 2016 | Catalunya Música Radio / Ars Acustica UER, Art's Birthday Party.
Logolepsy
(n.) a fascination or obsession with words
Lethologica
(n.) the inability to remember a word or put your finger on the right word
[logolepsy / lethologica] is an acousmatic work inspired in the two concepts above defined. It explores the versatility of the human voice through the manipulation of a fragmented discourse and the incorporation of radiophonic and glitched sounds.
glitched acquisitions (project)
audiovisual concert (live electronics and clarinet)
Year: 2015
Electronics and video: Raquel García-Tomás
Clarinet: Víctor de la Rosa
World premiered: 27 April 2015 - Cairo Contemporary Music Days 2015 / European-Egyptian Contemporary Music Society
glitched acquitistions is a journey across a particular universe in which sound and image are explored through glitch art. Composer Raquel García-Tomás and clarinettist Víctor de la Rosa have created a multidisciplinary project in which the main feature is an improvised musical performance alongside a video, set within a larger structure where performers interact with the visual cues.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
piano and electronics
Year: 2014 | Running Time: 09:17
Music and Video: Raquel García-Tomás
Illustration and screeningplay: Ainhoa Sarabia
Commissioned by OSIC (Cultural Department of the Government of Catalonia)
World premiered: 8 November 2015 by Rei Nakamura
Place: Vitoria (Bernaola Festival).
Further performances:
Reid Concert Hall, Edinburgh
Piano+ Festival: Imatronik ZKM, Karlsruhe
Festival Mixtur 2015, Barcelona
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – for piano, tape and video-animation is a multidisciplinary work that is born out of the collaboration of composer Raquel García-Tomás and illustrator Ainhoa Sarabia.
Its creation has come from a very specific purpose: achieving an own audio-visual language that, on the one hand, relates the work with the cinematic context of the beginning of the XXth century and, on the other hand, counts on the current expressive and technical resources. All disciplines involved have been treated accordingly to such aesthetics: black and white illustration, intertitles within the video –as in silent movies–, a piano on stage which interacts in a extreme mimetic way with the projection and merges with the tape’s sonic microcosms, which make us travel more than a century ago… All of this has been done in this way to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Lewis Carroll’s novel.
This work has been specially created for Rei Nakamura’s project Movement to sound, sound to Movement and funded by OSIC (Generalitat de Catalunya).
stone:speeches no. 1 & 6
©Raquel García-Tomás
stone:speeches
audiovisual installation
Year: 2014 | Running Time: 10:34
Premiered Contemporary Art Museum "Es Baluard" (Aljub)
Palma de Mallorca, June – July 2014
Music and Video: Raquel García-Tomás
Singer: Maria Hinojosa
stone:speeches (2014) belongs to the cycle of installations material:speeches. This cycle started with the sound installation steel:speeches, a work in collaboration with the acclaimed British sculptor Rob Olins that was exhibited at the Royal British Society of Sculptors in 2013.
For this occasion, composer and video-creator Raquel García-Tomás has devised an audio-visual installation composed of seven brief speeches which main thread runs through a hidden textual material that could only be seen time to time along the work. From these latent texts, the only information revealed is their punctuation; the rest is represented by a systematized alphabet formed by sounds. Eventually, in parts 2, 4 and 6, we can listen to soprano Maria Hinojosa pronouncing some words from the veiled texts.
I didn't have the common sense to stop
Pre-recorded electronics
Year: 2013 | Running time 02'48''
Music by Raquel García-Tomás · Photo by Deana Kolenčíková
I didn't have the common sense to stop is a work for solo electronics inspired by Deana Kolenčíková's Man with Owl and Lucy, awarded with the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2013
World premiere: 13th of December of 2013 · Late Shift concert's series - National Portrait Gallery (London)
Man with Owl and Lucy by Deana Kolenčíková, 2012 © Deana Kolenčíková
Wondjina is a work for bass clarinet, live electronics and video rooted in Australian Aboriginal culture. The Wondjina –most commonly known as Wandjina– were rain spirits who influenced the landscape and its inhabitants. When they felt the closeness of death, they would search for a place in the caves to die. Once they had, they would decorate the walls of those caves.
In this work, the main aim was to relate the bass clarinet with the Australian didgeridoo and explore the iconography of the wondjina in a video landscape that reinterprets the 3800-year-old paintings and responds with a contemporary view of tribal rites.
Wondjina
bass clarinet, live electronics, video and dance
Year: 2013 | Duration: 6 min~
Music and video by Raquel García-Tomás
Commissioned by OSIC (Cultural Department of the Government of Catalonia)
World premiere: 21 June 2013
Bass Clarinet: Víctor de la Rosa
Dance: Anne-Gaëlle Thiriot
Live electronics: Raquel García-Tomás
Not Wanting to Say Anything About John
Ensemble, electroacoustic and video
(Picc., Alto Fl., C.A., B. Cl., 4 Perc., Cel., Pno., Vln.1, Vln. 2, Vla., Vlc., Db.)
Year: 2012-2013 | Duration: 12:30 min
Music and video by Raquel García-Tomás | Illustration: Ainhoa Sarabia
Premiered and commissioned by the Variable Geometry Ensemble at the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall (London) on the 21 February 2013
Not Wanting to Say Anything About John commemorates John Cage’s 100th birthday. This multidisciplinary work has been inspired in Cage’s creation Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel (1969), which is a tribute to Marcel Duchamp and considered to be his first visual art project. Cage’s piece comprises two lithographs and a group of eight objects that he called “Plexigrams”: silk screen printing on Plexiglas panels. Each item consists in eight panels covered with words in different typefaces and pictures. Counting them all, there are sixty-four panels, the number of hexagrams in the I Ching. Cage used chance operations to compose the Plexigrams.
Not Wanting to Say Anything About John is a piece for ensemble of 15 musicians, tape and video. For this work I collaborated with illustrator Ainhoa Sarabia. She draught 64 objects for which I assigned aural information. We randomly created 8 different series of 8 ‘audio-visual’ objects each. Once I had them, my goal as a composer was to combine them in a very rational way, in order to develop the ability to associate disconnected material. I did the music but also did the video. The goal was to construct a whole, by extrapolating the musical materials and drawings to the video.
tangible
piano and tape
Year 2011-2012 | Running Time: 7:16 min
Commissioned by Mireia Vendrell, Stuttgart
World premiere: 20th of February 2012. KammerMusikSaal - Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart.
Performer: Mireia Vendrell
This recording: Live recording by Mireia Vendrell at Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall. *UK premiere. Royal College of Music of London –
"From the Soundhouse"
To hear the actual quality of the tape go to this link
tangible relates the relationship between a pianist and an apparently ephemeral material, which emerges from the heart of the instrument and grows to become a corporeal substance. The performer interacts with the rising sound allowing it to flourish and contributing to its development through the interaction and the dialogue.
While the pianist causes reactions in the electronics, the electronics initiate a symbiotic relationship with the performer. In other words, they bring new musical ideas which the pianist takes and develops. All together creates an engaging atmosphere in where the piano sound is merged with the electronics achieving an inseparable communion.
Tercer Manuscrito Eufónico
clarinet and tape
Year: 2008 | Duration: 6:30~
Performed and commissioned by Víctor de la Rosa
World premiere: 27th of March 2008.
"Joves intèrprets de Catalunya" Concert series
L'Auditori de Barcelona | Temporada 2007/08
*Live recording by Víctor de la Rosa