ORLAN intervenes here as a speakerine with her recognisable low voice (the text is a cosmologist list of events supposed to happen in the future, read in a chronological order as a inexorable countdown, until the total disappearance of everything). ORLAN's voice is will be audible (from 10.000 to 20 billion years) or submerged by the orchestra in the second part (from 50 billion years to total destruction).
The PolyTransMetaOrchestra (P.T.M.O) is a virtual orchestra, composed of four singers (Loré Lixenberg, Joan La Barbara, Wills Morgan and the artist Jacques Lizène who passed away on September 30, 2021) and 124 different instruments taken from the western civilisation as much as all other places of the earth.
Frédéric Acquaviva asked each chosen vocalist or instrumentist (some among the very best) or poets or composers, aged from 1 to 94, to record one note only, from which he composed the micropolyphonic first part of [səminal]. In the second part, gradually, all instrumentists are playing together (after having heard them in different combinaisons) before hearing electronic multiplications from this same tiny but seminal material.
As the voice will narrate the disappearance of every form of life, bit by bit, a more dense and advanced microtonal harmony will be heard, taking birth from the DNA of each instruments (violin, accordeon, female voice, male voice, piano, saxophone, viola da gamba, synthesizer, horns, drums, etc.), exactly like in a periode of cultural decay, when some creative voices continue the fight in order to exist and proliferate.
Composed (concept & music, data-text editing & dead electronics) by Frédéric Acquaviva, London, 2020-2021.
Performed by
Loré Lixenberg (soprano), Joan La Barbara (alto), Wills Morgan (tenor), Jacques Lizène (bass) & The Poly.Trans.Meta.Orchestra (P.T.M.O): Bartosz Glowacki (accordeon), Esther Ferrer (txistu), Tom Johnson (woodblock), Anne Franchini (bell), Pierre Mariétan (alpen horn), Mathius Shadow-Sky (electric guitar), Zeynel Polat (saz), Denis Dufour (thaï mouth organ), Hamish Hossain (tibetan horn), Lefteris Tsonis (charango), Matina Papagianopoulou (ukelele), Thierry Ollivier (didgeridoo), Bruno Moraes (repinique), Laura Stefanini (caixa), Joséfine Ajdelbaum (tibetan bowl), Barbara Wolman (tbila), Evi Papagianopoulou
(kora), Laurent Cauwet (plastic child guitar), Kirsten Jaenich (electric organ),
Yoann Sarrat (turntable), Olivier Sarrat (electric bass), Ophélia Candille (alto melodica), Erdmute W. White (tibetan bell), Chihiro Ono (violin), Gael Fuenmayor-Cabañas (maracas),
Jean-François Bory (japonese rin bell with kyoto wooden stick), Jean-Paul Sanson (bass viol),
Paul-Armand Gette (recorder with panties), Yoko Yamada (toy piano),
Virgile Novarina (darbouka), Marie-Sol Parant (church organ), Titi Parant (harmonium),
Jean-Luc Parant (folk guitar), Maggy Mauritz (kalimba), Maîtresse Cindy (chime), Didier Lecointre (musical glass), Lieutenant Caramel (djembé), Bibbe Hansen (bugle),
Phill Niblock (bluesband hohner international harmonica), Andy Ingamells (E-flat horn), Thierry Weyd (sandvikens stradivarius musical saw), Katherine Liberovskaya (mini zyther with fan), Sophie Sanson (shepherd's pipe), Ana Casillas (tabla), Jean-Baptiste Favory (mouth bow), Eugénie Kuffler (piccolo),
Trevor Wishart (bike horn), Gregory Rose (miniature organ pipe),
Eduardo Kac (digital piano), Jonas (J) Magnusson (mungiga), Cecilia Grönberg (lergök),
Quentin Rollet (sopranino saxophone), Tony Van Dorst (soprano melodica), Alexandre Yterce (human skin drum), Annette Malochet Malec (Bb clarinet), Thierry Villeneuve (electronic drum), Abbas Bakhtiari (daf), Patrick P. Porro (ektara), IONE (mbira), Marc-André Hamelin (piano), Eve Libertine (bird whistle),
Nicole Brenez (small drum), Elif Karlıdağ (okarina), Utkucan Eken (zurna), Arthur Soyer (theremin), Léna Franchini (cornetto), Jacob Heringman (lute),
Werner Durand (pvc-ney with bamboo resonator), Marie Kawazu (hontsubo-suzu), Jack Adler-McKean (tuba), Sarah Sarhandi (alto), Neil Luck (roland Juno 60 synthesizer), Gaëlle Coulon (organetto), Sylvia Hinz (paetzold sub great bass recorder),
Alvin Curran (shofar), Carmen Troncoso Cáceres (pre-columbian clay flute),
Charles Dreyfus Pechkoff (japonese toy percussion), Carina Stark (fanfare cornet), Al Margoris (prepared alto), Jeremiah Runnels (đàn nguyệt), Yan Jun (guqin), Simon Limbrick (cello steel pan), Habib Shehadeh Hanna (oud), Frances-Marie Uitti (cello), Jane Ilmola (kantele), Jean-Paul Curtay (rainstick), Jean Daufresne (saxhorn), Ole Martin Huser-Olsen (classical guitar), Zisis Tzimoziogas (boutzouki),
Broutin (metronome), Pascal Gallois (bassoon), Callum Armstrong (aulos), Poulomi Desai (sitar), Federico Reuben (supercollider), Patrick Muller (spinet), George Barton (marimba), Melissa Holding (koto), Heather Roche (bass clarinet), Chris Brannick (donkey's jawbone), Jacques de Guerny (bronze drum), Serge Vuille (triangle), Jamie Telford (bagpipe), Maryam Rezaei (santoor), Adaya Goldlevsky (harp), Julia Mihály (doepfer dark energy synth), Aude Jessemin (music box), Nissim Schaul (hurdy gurdy), Rodrigo Sigal (arturia pigments synth), Zehui Zhao (guzheng), Jace Chak Hin Zhao (zhongruan), Taisheng Zhao (sanxian), Béatrice Martin (harsichord), Adam Slimani (muselaar), Christopher Redgate (oboe), Alberte Acquaviva (tuning fork), Jason Yarde (alto saxophone), Caroline Delume (theorbo), Myriam Mézières (sagates), François Poyet (whistle), Bernadette Février (slide flute),
Joël Hubaut (pipe), Clément Lebrun (slide trumpet), Christoph Ogiermann (synlab), Vinko Globokar (trombone).
Frédéric Acquaviva, born in 1967, has been since 1990 a
sound artist and
experimental music composer, creating chronopolyphonic installations and CDs and playing in art galleries, in museums or in underground venues.
Staying away from traditional networks of musicians and composers, he meets and works with historical figures in art, poetry or video, sometimes a long time before their being discovered by the media. He has collaborated this way with
Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaître, Marcel Hanoun,
Pierre Guyotat,
Jean-Luc Parant, mezzo-soprano
Loré Lixenberg, film maker
FJ Ossang and choreographer Maria Faustino, among others.
His astonishing music, in which he chooses an experimental presentation using, is constantly exploring, always in new ways, the relationship between voice and language, sound and its meaning, even the idea of physical body sounds integrated into the musical composition, kept away from the concert hall's diffusions (acousmatic or sound installations). As the critic
Eric Vautrin remarked in
Mouvement magazine, his work is not a “sound work but a work about sound”.
Acquaviva has become not only one of the essential protagonists of the rediscovery of historical avant-garde, more precisely of Lettrism (
Isidore Isou, Gabriel Pomerand, Maurice Lemaître, Gil J Wolman, Jean-Louis Brau, Jacques Spacagna,
François Dufrêne, Roland Sabatier, Alain Satié,
Broutin), but of
Sound Poetry (
Henri Chopin,
Bernard Heidsieck), and has worked with some unique and outstanding historical figures (Pierre Albert-Birot,
Otto Muehl). He has done this through his knowledge of and interest in different disciplines: editing books, curating art exhibitions, being an events creator, lecturing, establishing catalogue raisonnés and bibliographic databases, creating radiophonic works, being an art critic, a filmmaker, and a publisher, with Editions Derrière la Salle de Bains or for his own editions:
AcquAvivA, and the magazine
CRU.
See also
Yoann Sarrat : Phonosophie et corporalité compositionnelle – L'art sonore de Frédéric Acquaviva
![Frédéric Acquaviva - [səminal] (CD)](img_hd/img/ouvrage/9283/Screen_Shot_2022_02_27_at_09.39.29.png)
