nossas mãos
2024
Instrumentation: piano trio and video
Duration: 30 minutes
Premiere Performance: TIME:SPANS Festival, DiMenna Center for Classical Music, NYC. Aug 13, 2024.
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2024
Instrumentation: piano trio and video
Duration: 30 minutes
Premiere Performance: TIME:SPANS Festival, DiMenna Center for Classical Music, NYC. Aug 13, 2024.
nossas mãos (our hands) is an intermedia composition for piano trio and video,
centered on the subject of “hands”. The work examines our hands as powerful symbols of human agency, affection, protest, and as technologies for music making.
The work draws inspiration from classical art and pop culture, with a multitude of references to hands: from their depiction in painting and sculptures to the acts of clapping and applause, touch and hand-holding as gestures of affection, fists as symbols of protest, hands in prayer, among others. Musically, the piece unfolds through an underlying narrative that connects Brazilian popular music (love songs about hands) with Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio, drawing a bridge between my cultural roots and classical training.
Through the use of found media, quotations, and visual references, the piece engages in a mimetic cycle with constant interaction between video, sound, and live performance, while also moving back and forth in historical time. This work, along with my other intermedia pieces (e.g. Water Triptych and mirror scenes), uses found materials as a means to critically engage with reality— both as a way of reflecting on my mixed heritage and identities, and as a direct response to contemporary visual and musical culture.
The video component of nossas mãos was assembled and edited by myself. It was inspired by the collage technique of visual artist Christian Marclay, and by the emotional intensity and variegated repetition within video works by Arthur Jafa and Mark Leckey.
The work was commissioned by, and made in collaboration with the piano trio Longleash. It was made possible through the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with funding provided by The Mellon Foundation. It was premiered on August 13, 2024, at the TIME:SPANS Festival, held at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music.
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The work draws inspiration from classical art and pop culture, with a multitude of references to hands: from their depiction in painting and sculptures to the acts of clapping and applause, touch and hand-holding as gestures of affection, fists as symbols of protest, hands in prayer, among others. Musically, the piece unfolds through an underlying narrative that connects Brazilian popular music (love songs about hands) with Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio, drawing a bridge between my cultural roots and classical training.
Through the use of found media, quotations, and visual references, the piece engages in a mimetic cycle with constant interaction between video, sound, and live performance, while also moving back and forth in historical time. This work, along with my other intermedia pieces (e.g. Water Triptych and mirror scenes), uses found materials as a means to critically engage with reality— both as a way of reflecting on my mixed heritage and identities, and as a direct response to contemporary visual and musical culture.
The video component of nossas mãos was assembled and edited by myself. It was inspired by the collage technique of visual artist Christian Marclay, and by the emotional intensity and variegated repetition within video works by Arthur Jafa and Mark Leckey.
The work was commissioned by, and made in collaboration with the piano trio Longleash. It was made possible through the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with funding provided by The Mellon Foundation. It was premiered on August 13, 2024, at the TIME:SPANS Festival, held at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music.
