Cinq regards sur 2024
for two pianos, two percussionists and electronics
Description
Cinq regards sur 2024 is a ten-minute, five-movement work composed for the American ensemble Yarn/Wire (two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart, two percussionists, and electronics). A co-commission by the Time of Music festival, IRCAM, and Radio France for the program Création Mondiale, the piece is a deeply personal and sonically immersive diary of the year 2024.
The work's trajectory moves from the global to the intimate. The first two movements are constructed from a dense mass of multilingual news broadcasts, representing the relentless flood of information we face. From this chaos, the voices of victims emerge: first from environmental disasters, then in a heart-rending phone call between two orphaned siblings in Gaza. The central movement reflects on technology's paradoxical effect on society: a cacophony of notifications symbolising the "capitalism of attention" momentarily yields to expansive instrumental resonance, suggesting a rare moment of inner peace.
This reflective turn leads to the final two, more personal movements. The fourth is a sound-cloud of the composer’s own musical life in 2024: a swim through fragments of works composed, performed, and heard. The finale is a tribute to family, using audio from home videos of the composer's children. These innocent voices create a moving parallel with the voices of war-torn children heard earlier, and the movement concludes with an excerpt from a song by Bantastic Fand, the band of the composer's recently deceased uncle, Nacho Para.
Cinq regards sur 2024 was an opportunity to delve deeply into the expressive possibilities of the 24-EDO microtonal system. The electronic part was developed in the IRCAM studios in a fruitful collaboration with computer music designer Rémi Le Taillandier, whose creative input was essential to the final result and formed a key part of the composer's doctoral research into collaboration within the creative process.
Instrumentation Category
Chamber Works
Premiere
Yarn/Wire & Rémi Le Taillandier (electronics), June 23, 2025, IRCAM Espace de projection, Paris, France
Movements1. Un regard vers le ciel — A glance at the sky, 2. Un regard vers les décombres — A glance at the rubble, 3. Un regard vers l’écran — A glance at the screen, 4. Un regard vers la partition — A glance at the score, 5. Un regard vers le berceau — A glance at the cradle
Commisioned by / dedicationsCommissioned by the Time of Music festival, IRCAM, and Radio France for the program Création Mondiale. Dedicated to Yarn/Wire
PDF for promotional useArchive number
MF36129
