WNMD 2025 · CONCERT 19
Thirst for Change / Sede de Mudança
04-06-2025 · 13h30
O’culto da Ajuda
Lisbon
Bilheteira · Box Office (O’culto)

Nuno Rodrigues · violin
Hugo Vasco Reis · Portuguese guitar

Nuno Rodrigues · Hugo Vasco Reis (© Estúdio Ricardo Daniel)

Pedro Prista · keynote speaker
Barry Truax, Ville Aslak Raasakka, Miguel Azguime · speaker

The colloquium will open with Hugo Vasco Reis’ performance Tateabilidade, followed by the communication of the keynote speaker, the anthropologist Pedro Prista. The meeting will proceed with the presentation and discussion of four short communications by the World New Music Days 2025 composers Barry Truax, Ville Aslak Raasakka and Miguel Azguime, after which Aske Zidore’s Lærkeanimationer, meaning “Lark Animations”, will be performed by the violinist Nuno Rodrigues. To wrap up the session, the colloquium opens to the public, promoting a joint reflection on the matter of the Thirst for Change.

FULL PROGRAMME

| 13h30 |
HUGO VASCO REIS  (Portugal, 1981)
Tateabilidade (2023), 30’ for Portuguese guitar, objects, electronics
— Tateabilidade is a cycle of five works, composed and performed by Hugo Vasco Reis, developed through the act of experimentation, which relate the Portuguese guitar, objects, electronics and the sense of touch. The Portuguese guitar is placed on a table and the sonic discourse is constructed through its interaction with the electronics and with the various objects that surround it, such as stones, strings, erasers, files, plastics, bows, e.bows, aluminum foils, glasses, speakers and microphones. The only fixed interpretation for the purpose of preserving is this phonographic record. In live performances, it is not about preservation, but rather about tactile possibilities of experimentation that happen in the moment and that leads the discourse to unexpected sonic forms. The sonic coexistence assumes a free and non-synchronized structure, where touch, experimentation and listening try to encourage an approach that includes the challenges of contemporary practice, the transformations of the world around us and stimulates the listener to reflect on the sonic possibilities of the instrument. Tateabilidade is a sound immersion in which all acoustic and electroacoustic sounds are coming from the Portuguese guitar, presented here in a less conventional way in relation to its tradition.
Hugo Vasco Reis, 2023

| 14h |
Keynote speaker | PEDRO PRISTA · Thirst for Change
— Thirst is water without us and our impulse towards it. Unlike hunger, thirst doesn't order violence to satisfy it; on the contrary, what it imposes is the readjustment of cycles and flows, the agreement between lives and existences, the continuation of movements in the world until the silence of minerals and Time. It dictates change and peace, and points out the destinies to be created and the paths to be taken towards them. We carried the war through to the geological torments of the Earth and, today, as we inhabit the shattered condition of the Anthropocene, the axial molecule returns us to the history we made, and to this other, immense history of the resurgence of life in the world. Will it still be with us? Only invention - art, creation, searching - can tell us. Only it, like water, connects and changes, transforms and moves, and still gives us a sign of that yearning or thirst for change that we call hope.

| 14h30 |
BARRY TRUAX · Music, Soundscape and Acoustic Sustainability
[Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University]
— With environmental issues and the concept of sustainability being of current concern, some artists and musicians are considering their relationship to such issues, and asking what responsibility they might have as a result and what practical contributions they are qualified to make. In this presentation I will argue that there are two main directions that are relevant to musicians, the first being the ways in which musical qualities can be integrated with external referents in a meaningful and creative manner, and the second being the ways in which the skills of musicians and composers can be profitably applied to environmental concerns.

VILLE ASLAK RAASAKKA · Bio-Composition – Biological Research and Collaboration with Scientists in Compositional Focus
— How to shift ecological composition from an awareness-raising practice to a more hands-on practice? What can biological research, environmental data, collaboration with environmental scientists, field recordings and bioacoustics bring to ecological composition? In my presentation I will introduce recent compositions and their collaborative composition processes focusing on forest ecology and sea ecology.

MIGUEL AZGUIME
— [abstract available soon]

| 15h15 |
ASKE ZIDORE (Denmark, 1984)
Lærkeanimationer (2023), 30’ for violin
ISCM Danish section
— Lark Animations (2023) for solo violin is an exploration of the songbird's existence through a commemorative study, drawing inspiration from its movement patterns and heralding calls of spring. The player is surrounded by twelve sheets of music, forming an organic open-world system that animates the gestures of the body, the movements of the bow, and the resonance of the violin, echoing a singing lark soaring through the skies. Through its non-linear arrangement and open structure, the piece encourages the performer to immerse themselves in the material, leaving the actual duration at the discretion of the violinist and adaptable to the specific circumstances of each performance.

| 16h |
Debate