Rituals - Sławomir Wojciechowski International Festival of Contemporary Music Warsaw Autumn

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Commissioned by the excellent pianist Małgorzata Walentynowicz, with whom I have had the pleasure to work several times, this work applies the sampling technique that is now ubiquitous in popular music. It consists in recombining cut fragments of recordings in accordance with narrative and formal relations. These samples comprise, apart from sound itself and its timbres, also other contents and meanings taken over from the recording, such as gestures, grooves, beats, and riffs, associated with a specific style or idiom, which leads to nearly physical relationships forming between the sounds, based on the charges and vectors of the individual samples. Małgorzata Walentynowicz’s technical and aesthetic versatility has made it possible to endow this choreography of vibrant textures with appropriate liveliness and momentum. The piece also includes a video layer created by Dorota Walentynowicz, which consists of kaleidoscopic, abstract structures, discreetly emphasising and commenting upon the rhythmic drive of the music itself. 

Sławomir Wojciechowski