Hagi

About

“Hagi is a long plaintive song for alto saxophone, whose inflections and accents are juxtaposed with the sonic layers of the rest of the quartet, including scratching effects on the violin.

The title refers to a small town on the Japanese coast where I finished the last notes of the piece, and several sounds I heard there inspired my writing: the use of microtones, present in Kabuki and Noh theater, the bells of Buddhist ceremonies, evoked here by the triangle, but also by the appearance of sustained notes on the timpani, recalling their long resonance, and the long, noisy textures, a tribute to the progressive cracking of Hagi ceramics under the effect of time and heat.

The first minutes allow the saxophone to develop its song, in dialogue with the other instruments in the background, before creating sound combinations around different polarities; duos appear, but the saxophone retains its "vocal" behavior until the end of the piece, despite changes in acoustic settings and dynamic and textural variations.

Hagi is part of a personal approach to sound research around questions of instrumental identity and hybridization.”


Clara Olivares, December 2019