BEATRIZ FERREYRA / NATASHA BARRETT Souvenirs Cachés / Innermost LP Persistence of Sound PS005

 

Take Pierre Schaeffer for instance... his autonomous idiom of music that can organize itself and can be used individually when you think of creating something yourself.

Beatriz Ferreyra created deeply mystical soundtrack for the brave - an altered states of notes and pitches. A voyage into the ultra terrain of things phantasmagorical and uncanny. A high end production accentuates and emphasizes the archipelago of details in her work.

Together with Natasha Barrett have an extensive body of work in their individual biographies. 

A member of the original Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), Ferreyra moved from her native Argentina to study with Nadia Boulanger and Edgardo Cantón in Paris in the 1960s. Ferreyra contributed to Pierre Schaeffer’s book Traité des Objets Musicaux (1966), collaborated on the realisation of Schaeffer’s ‘Solfège de l’Objet Sonore’ (1967), and went on to take composition lessons with Earl Brown and György Ligeti at Darmstadt. As an independent composer, Ferreyra has received major international commissions, also composing for film and ballet. In 2014 she was elected as an Honorary Member of the International Confederation ofElectroacoustic Music. Following Ferreyra’s 2019 album Huellas Entreveradas this albumpresents her new work ‘Souvenirs cachés’ (2020), alongside the 2003work ‘Murmureln’, Ferreyra’s response to a commission to compose adanceable electroacoustic piece. Whilst studying with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham,

Natasha Barrett was able to work with BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre), which led to a doctoral composition degree supervised by composer Denis Smalley. Barrett has since established an international reputation as a composer of 3D audio and ambisonics. She treats spatialisation as a musical parameter, and told the New York Times,“I’m really concerned with the idea of tangibility. Sound is invisible, butwe can do things that make you want to reach out and touch it.” Barrett describes her inspiration as coming from the immediate soundingmatter of the world around us, as well as the way it behaves. Barrett’s works are performed and commissioned throughout the world, and have received a long list of prizes, including the Giga-Hertz Award and the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Awards.

SIDE A

1. Beatriz Ferreyra: Souvenirs cachés (Hidden memories) [12:34]

2020. Commissioned by Semibreve Festival, Portugal. Dedicated to

flautist Hernan Gomez.

‘Some images, some sounds, some childhood impressions lost in the

winds of time.’

2. Beatriz Ferreyra: Murmureln [04:03]

2003. Commissioned for Radio Berlin’s Maerz Musik Sonic Arts Lounge

dance party, as a danceable electroacoustic piece. Ferreyra’s Argentinian

roots are explored in a playful rendition of an old Comparsita, made from

collaged vocal sounds and sampled fragments of tango musicians Astor

Piazzola, Anibal Troilo, Susana Rinaldi and Roberto Goyeneche.

SIDE B

1. Natasha Barrett: Innermost [18:49]

2019. Composed from abstracted location recordings from outdoor mass

community cele- brations in Norway.

‘Innermost is about inner individuality finding outward expression and

commonality.’

Vocal sounds and marching band recordings reflect the open acoustics of

a public event.

The second section is an example of ‘spatial counterpoint,’ where layers of

minimal pitched sounds linger, intersect and interact.

persistenceofsound.co.uk/souvenirs-caches-innermost