Vortex Temporum: Recent Episodes
Vortex Temporum
composers and inner thoughts about this and that --- vortex temporum is a podcast by Nuno Aroso / Limina & Diana Ferreira / Arte no Tempo
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In the 46th episode of Vortex Temporum, Swedish composer Malin Bång (Sävedalen, 1974) explores the identity and potential of acoustic objects in contemporary music, arguing that any physical item, from drainage pipes to household boxes, can transcend its utilitarian function to become a musical instrument.
Through the lenses of "sound ecology" and the philosophy of "vibrant matter," Bång suggests that using these objects not only preserves neglected sounds but also challenges the hierarchy between humans and the inanimate, transforming our perception of everyday life into a continuous musical experience.
A founding member, resident composer and co-artistic director of Curious Chamber Players, Malin Bång is also a senior lecturer at the composition department at Göteborg Academy of Music and Drama.
credits:
Jasmonate [2017], for septet | Curious Chamber Players // underpassing [2017/18], for 3 performers // Arching [2013], for cello and amplified objects | UmeDuo // inuti [2023], for quintet
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A few days before ars ad hoc presents the Portuguese premiere of his String Quartet 2.5 "Playing with Seeds" [2017] at the Serralves Museum, American composer George E. Lewis (Chicago, 1952) shares some reflections on his long-standing fascination with the classical trope of depiction in American music. A professor in Columbia University’s Department of Music and the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Lewis is also the Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, as well as co-editor and co-author of "Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic New Music Today." While pondering the question, “If we get what we want, what will it sound like?”, Lewis has been creating a series of musical meditations on the sound of decolonisation. Can music function as sociological research? Well, why not?
credits:
Weathering [2023], for symphonic orchestra | American Composers Orchestra; Vimbayi Kaziboni > conductor
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As listeners will soon notice, Portuguese composer Luís Salgueiro (1993) moves with ease between philosophy and music — two territories that, in his work, often mirror one another. In this episode, we join him in a quiet exploration of how thought becomes sound and how language shapes what we hear, while listening to a few fleeting excerpts from his own music.
Do we still have the courage to speak about music?
credits: Parroting [2025], soundscape // Wolf Town [2020], for saxophone quartet | Quatuor de saxophones Quasar // Expeletives censored with snippets from
mir nichts, dir nichts [2024–5], for small ensemble | ars ad hoc
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After the summer break, we return with composer Ludger Brümmer (Werne, 1958) as the guest of the first episode of the 2025/26 season. Like many composers, Brümmer cannot resist speaking about music — yet he does so in a uniquely compelling way. The former director of ZKM shares insights into his approach to sound: the role of structure and intuition, space as narrative and as a field for exploration, as well as the possibilities of physical modelling. In this episode, we are invited to immerse ourselves in his sonic universe and the ideas that shape it
credits: La cloche sans vallees [1992], acousmatic composition // The gates of H. [1993], acousmatic composition // Spheres of Resonance [2015], acousmatic composition // Falling [2020], acousmatic composition // between twilight [2019], for 4 or 5 midi Pianos
Look @ CDs Sonic Patterns or Spheres of Resonance by WERGO / Spotify / AppleMusic.
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Among the many ways of categorising composers, one is to distinguish between those who like to follow the rules and those who have the impetus to question them. As far as we can tell from listening to his documentary “dumpsterdiving and food saving”, Alessandro Perini(1983) belongs to those who like to defy the rules. He is the author of the longest episode of this podcast, with which we end the season reflecting on a major problem of our time.
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A few days before the Portuguese premiere of Silvia Borzelli's (Rome, 1978) A Self-portrait (with Anatsui in the background) [2022], this Netherlands based Italian composer shares some insights on her own music, erosion, resistance and whatever comes before music.
credits: stalagma (Anna Politkovskaja in memoriam) [2007], for piano | Emanuele Torquati > piano // zattere [2013], for piano and stereo soundtrack | Vittoria Quartararo > piano // hyper-image [2020, rev. 2023], for piano concertante and 5 instruments | mdi ensemble // A Self-Portrait (with Anatsui in the background) [2022], for prepared piano | Paolo Gorini > piano
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Right before the release of the album “City Walk”, in which Nuno Aroso and his ensemble (Clamat - colectivo variável) perform João Pedro Oliveira (Lisbon, 1959) percussion music, Portuguese composer based in Santa Barbara - California, tells us about the universe from which his music arises.
Would it all be rock?
credits: In the House of the Glass King [2021], concerto for marimba, vibrafone, percussion ensemble and fixed media electronics | Clamat – Colectivo Variável; Nuno Aroso and Henrique Ramos as soloists// Vox Sum Vitae [2011], for vibraphone and fixed media electronics | Nuno Aroso > vibraphone // Broken Loops [2013], for 2 percussion players | Vitória do Bem and João Pedro Lourenço
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One of Sivan Cohen Elias’ (Jerusalem, 1976) major interests must be sound puppetry. In Vortex Temporum episode number 39, this Israeli composer lets us listen to a conversation she has with her husband and collaborator, Rey Hulme, about this central matter of her own music.
credits:
How to Make a Monster [2021], for a performer with objects and live electronics | performance by Winnie Huang // Escape Room [2024], for trio percussion | ensemble Line Upon Line Percussion // Whistle Town [2022], for 8 musicians, live electronics, and video | ensemble soundinitiative // .onion - short opera, for tenor, soprano, electric guitar, percussion, cello, string orchestra, and fixed media.
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In episode 38 of Vortex Temporum podcast, Sara Stevanović (Belgrade, 1998) reflects on Harry Lehmann's 'Ideologiemaschinen: Wie Cancel Culture funktioniert'.
credits:
search: pink fingers fragile archives [2024]. live performance by Ensemble Recherche at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik festival 2024.
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Swiss composer with roots in Trinidad and Tobago Jessie Cox (1995) reflects on what music can be beyond music. Isn’t it about existence after all ?
credits:
Invocation: Nebula, from When You're a Star [UT007]
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The last Vortex Temporum episode of 2024 Spring introduces us to the delicate universe of Canadian composer Chiyoko Szlavnics (Toronto, 1967), who takes us on a brief journey through the mysteries of listening.
credits:
For Eva Hesse [2006] sinewaves - excerpts) // Oracle I & II (excerpts). Ensemble Contrechamps (dress rehearsal, at Bellelay Abbey, Switzerland).
Field recordings: Canada, Germany, Poland, Switzerland.
Test recordings made at Bellelay Abbey, Switzerland.
Research recordings made at St. Pierre Cathédrale, Geneva. Vincent Thevanaz: organ.
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In this episode, French composer Clara Maïda (1963) shares "a few thoughts about some aspects of AI and about the conception of the Human psyche that lies in the background of this technology. Starting with a reflection on algorithmic systems and the excessive decision power given to AI, the podcast seems to have finally turned into a kind of manifesto for the psychic unconscious, the world of affects, sensations, imagination and artistic practice, all these ways of apprehending the world that lead to an attempt to free oneself from the possible alienation that we undergo in our social systems."
credits:
(a)utom@ton [2024] // Web-wake [2017] // Web-wave [2016] // King(a)abstract [2012] // Shel(l)ter - hinter… ( ) …Eiter [2010] // Shel(l)ter - später… ( ) …Winter [2009] // Kinê-Diffr(a)t [2008] // Fluctuatio (in)animi [2006] // Via rupta [2005]
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Polish composer and singer Agata Zubel (Wrocław, 1978) is the voice of Vortex Temporum's 32th episode. She deals intimately with vocal sounds, both as singer and as a master composer of vocal music: reflecting on language, meaning and emotionality is a natural extension of her work. Have a listen and find out the world of this composer/performer!
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In Vortex Temporum's 31st episode, Tokyo based Irish composer Anna Murray (1987) shares some thoughts on music and the influence of Japanese culture in her work.
credits:
Rndr 12 (Paths) | Anna Murray > electronics // Azuma-asobi (versions 1&2) | Anna Murray > piano // LIT | Michelle O'Rourke > voice // Both Beaming and Beckoning | Alex Koi > voice; Michelle Hromin and Zachary Good > clarinet; Andres Guerra > guitar; Noelia Cruz > violin
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Sofia Avramidou (1988) reflects on both the creative process and her roots as a Greek musician.
credits:
What can that be but my apple-tree? [2023], for string quartet | 2e2m string quartet // Géranomachie [2021], for large ensemble and electronics | Ensemble Intercontemporain // A hug to die [2023], for ensemble | Ensemble Intercontemporain
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Instead of letting us listen to his own music, Spanish composer Manuel Rodríguez-Valenzuela (Valencia, 1980) prefers to show us the music he grew up with, which is part of his most intimate story.
While trying to recognise Manuel's multiple references, we can not avoid the nostalgia of a lost world where Time was much slower.
Have a listen and share with us the most important works you discovered in your own journey.
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The 28th episode of Vortex Temporum podcast brings us Vienna based Italian composer Lorenzo Troiani (1989) with some thoughts about perception and attentiveness.
credits:
Dalla voce. Instabile [2012] for contrabass | Florentin Ginot > double bass
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The Irish composer Karen Power (1977) shares a couple of stories about some of the wildest listening experiences she has had.
credits:
field recording made in Rainforest in Laos // Instruments of Ice [2015] | Quiet Music Ensemble & Arctic Ice (to be released later in 2024).
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The UK based Argentinean composer Alejandro Viñao (Buenos Aires, 1951) stars the 26th episode of our podcast and invites us to "look at the world from the opposite point of view" we normally hold. Alejandro quotes Eduardo Galeano, Laurent Binet and also Walt Whitman and, by listening to him, we immediately feel the urge to do the (not so) simple exercise of thinking the world in the perspective of the other.
credits:
POEMS & PRAYERS [2023], for 16 singers, 2 pianos and 4 percussion players | The Yale Choral Artists & The Percussion Collective; Jeffrey Douma > conductor
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In this episode of Vortex Temporum, Leigh Landy (1951) first shares his sadness about the lack of impact of most innovative music and suggests that things don’t have to be this way. He then engages in a dialogue with re-re-composed samples from his Radio Series in which connections with listeners’ experience are made, attempting to demonstrate, as stated in German in the final sample of this podcast, that ‘everything that you hear turns into musical sound’.
credits:
Oh là la radio [F, 2007] (8 ch) // To BBC or Not [UK, 2008] (8 ch) // Radio-aktiv [D, 2011] // China Radio Sound [CN, 2013] (5.1) made in collaboration with students from the Shenyang Conservatory of Music // Mezihlas -- Přeshlas – Nahlas (Radio – Voice – Overs) [CZ, 2017] (8 ch) // On the Éire [IRL, NI, 2018] (8 ch) // Aplican Términos y Condiciones [MX, 2022] (8 ch)
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The 24th episode of Vortex Temporum podcast brings us a dialogue between Klaus Ospald and Klaus Ospald (1956). Let’s check if this German composer agrees with himself.
credits:
Maíz raíz, menos criatura [2014/2015], for orchestra, piano and chamber choir, on text by Miguel Hernández | Markus Bellheim > piano; Singer Pur; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Peter Rundel > conductor // Sopra un basso rilievo antico sepolcrale... [2008], from the Leopardi-Zyklus, for mixed choir, bass tuba, four percussionists and live electronics | WDR Rundfunkchor Köln; Hans Nickel > Basstuba; Schlagquartett Köln; Experimentalsstudio des SWR (Reinhold Braig and Joachim Haas > sound direction); Rupert Huber > conductor
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2024’s first episode of Vortex Temporum podcast features Nigerian born composer, based in Switzerland since 1968, Charles Uzor (Udo Mbaise, 1961). Charles guides us along the episode with his voice, thoughts and sounds in order to offer us his manifesto. If you do not know his work yet, you might be very well surprised by clicking play.
credits:
qui ainsi me refait…. veoir seulement et oïr [2003], for guitar quartet | guitar ensemble 'quasi fantasia' (Christian Bissig > standard ten-string guitar; Karin Rüdt > octavine guitar; Susanne Ott > terz guitar; Gudrun Bachmann > quinte-basse guitar) // Jaray's journey to the Ba-Benzélé [2022], for Ondes Martenot and hybrid electronics | Caroline Ether > ondes martenot; Charles Uzor > sound bawls, piano reverb, electronics
texts (also by Charles Uzor)
Manifesto. Nach der Natur // 10 Bamboos // Snow
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The last Vortex Temporum's episode of 2023 arrives from France, where Iranian born composer Sina Fallahzadeh (1981) lives and works. Sina shares with us some timeless thoughts on life and music surgically wrapped in delicate sound.
credits: sound material from Arche [2020] // Yasnâ [2019], for choir and electronics - commissioned by IRCAM and Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir // Métanoïa [2019], for baritone, ensemble and electronics, commissioned by IRCAM and Ensemble l'Itinéraire.
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Closing the year 2023, Colone based Portuguese composer Luís Antunes Pena (Lisbon, 1973) reveals that, for himself, composing means to be able to dive into a domain that one does not control totally. Or perhaps this episode is about his addiction to buying books about anything. Anyway, have a listen to his beautiful analog synthesizer improvisation while discovering the his world.
credits: improvisations with Serge Analog Synthesizer and Csound processing.
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German composer Johannes Kreidler (Esslingen, 1980) is a professor of music composition at the Hochschule für Musik Basel (Switzerland). In the 15th episode of Vortex Temporum podcast he reads us in a very personal manner three texts by three distinguished philosophers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Theodor W. Adorno and Gilles Deleuze. Find out what do they have to say about something related to ...conceptual music.
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On the 14th episode of Vortex Temporum podcast, German composer Enno Poppe (Hemer/Sauerland, 1969) tells us about what interests him the most. In a conversation occurred at Casa da Música (Porto), the composer reveals how difficult it is for an artist to talk about something that has nothing to do with his own work and he shares some thoughts on music and the way composers talk about it, but also about travelling, literature or reading wikipedia articles.
credits:
Schrank, for nine musicians [1998]: II | ensemble mosaik & E. Poppe // Speicher V [2012] | Klangforum Wien & E. Poppe
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The 13th episode of Vortex Temporum podcast brings us some thoughts of Dutch composer Kees Tazelaar (1962) on Jaap Vink (1930 – 2023). In this tribute to his first teacher, deceased last January, Tazelaar uses excerpts of two of his own works – Erwachen heiterer Empfindungen bei der Ankunft auf dem Lande [2014] and Wellen [2023] – based on techniques he learnt from Vink.
Besides being a composer, Kees Tazelaar is the head of the historical Institute of Sonology since 2006 and a historian who has specialised in the early years of electronic music in the Netherlands and Germany.
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The 12th episode of Vortex Temporum podcast brings us the New York based American composer Mary Jane Leach(1949), who shares some thoughts about acoustic spaces and her memories on occasional sound experiments. In the background we may listen to her organ work Pipe Dreams [1989], performed by herself.
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In the 11st episode of this podcast, Elżbieta Sikora tells us about some of the adventures she lived while "hunting sounds". One of them occurred in Portugal and resulted on a saxophone and tape piece commissioned by GRM that testifies the urgency of the projects that artists can't give up.
credits:
Lisboa, tramway 28 - hommage à Fernando Pessoa [1998] | Daniel Kientzy > saxophones // Grain de sable [2002] // Axe Rouge V [2008]
note: musical excerpts from the works mentioned above were freely mixed and edited by AnT.
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A co-founding member of Ensemble neoN, Jan Martin Smørdal (Horten, 1978) is a Norwegian composer and guitar player whose musical background is routed in jazz, pop and other non-classical expressions. He was awarded the prestigious Arne Nordheim Composers Prize in 2022.
In the 10th episode of Vortex Temporum podcast, he reflects on some recurring topics in his compositional praxis and reveals how reading Philip Warren Anderson's "More is different" affected his way of composing.
credits:
Répétitions I & II [2021] | Alessandra Rombolà > flute // (herd)STUDY [2016] | Ensemble Ernst // Choosing to sing I; React | Ensemble neoN & Eivind Lønning // My Favourite Thing 3 | Norwegian Radio Orchestra // Kraftbalanse | Jan Martin Smørdal & Øystein Wyller Odden // photo by Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard
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On the 9th episode of Vortex Temporum podcast, Paris based Lebanese composer Karim Haddad (Beirut, 1962) offers us a piece of sound art composed by a mixture of excerpts of his own music, reflecting on texts by Friedrich Hölderlin, Antonin Artaud and T.S Eliot.
The composer himself leaves us some notes to contextualise this episode.
• • •
From Hölderlin's "reflections" [Notes, fragments] on the poetical process, a statment concerning the core of "true" poetics (artistic/musical/poetic production):
"The utmost truth is when in itself the error becomes also truth, because in it's whole system it is placed at the correct time and the correct space. It is the light that illuminates itself and the night as well. True Poetry is when the unpoetic becomes also poetic, because whithin the whole of the work, it is uttered at the right time and at the right place. But to do so, a swift conceptual understanding is most necessary. How to find the right place at the right time, if you still linger frightfully over it and don't know how much there is to it, or how little can be made of it. It is eternal serenity, joy of Gods, to place everything in its correct place within the whole; [totality] That is why without understanding or ordered feeling, through and through, no excellence, no life."
Hölderlin
This "CodPast" is shaped as Hölderlin's formulae and should be self explanatory.
Excerpts of works by Karim Haddad: First Attemped Escape from Silence: Tunnels [2005], from the opera from the opera " Seven Attempted Escapes from Silence” // Noch eins ist aber zu sagen… [1998], for 2 sopranos, fl (dbl-bass), cl (bass/dbl-bass), french horn,trbn, elec. guitar, string orchestra and electronics // La prédestination au labyrinthe ou de la tellurique de l'esprit [1992], fixed media // Ash-Wednesday [1999], fixed media // Etude 9a [2022 - in progress]
Texts by Friedrich Hölderlin, Antonin Artaud and T.S Eliot.
Note: All excerpts are mixed and don't appear in their original form.
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Richard Barrett (Swansea, 1959) shares some inner thoughts about two poets with whom he worked: Harry Gilonis e Simon Howard (1960 - 2013), respectively authors of the texts Barrett used in eye-blink (1) [2020] and natural causes [2016-17].
credits:
eye-blink (1) [2020] | Alinéa Ensemble // natural causes, act 3 [2017] | Musikfabrik
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The first Vortex Temporum episode of 2023 (the seventh of this podcast series) bring us a few reflections on life and music by the Russian composer Dmitri Kourliandski (Moscow, 1976), living in France since last year. His words are here complemented with an excerpt from his most recent single.
credits:
abandoned playgrounds | mats scheidegger > guitar samples; aleksey kruglov > saxophone samples
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Essen based British composer, improvisor and software developer Michael Edwards (Cheshire, 1968) combines extraordinary intelligence with a brilliant sense of humour. In the sixth episode of Vortex Temporum, while sharing a few excerpts of his own music, Michael Edwards tells us about a few things that he normally bitches about when prevented from talking about music.
credits:
jitterbug // for rei as a doe | Karin Schistek > piano // ma bell| Michael Pattmann > percussion // durchhaltevermögen | Mieko Kanno > violin // don't flinch | Yvonne Zehner > guitar // HOTPO | Henrique Portovedo > alto saxophone
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Another piece of art is what Berlin based Portuguese composer Tiago Cutileiro (Lisbon, 1967) brings us on the fifth episode of Vortex Temporum podcast. He tells us about time, our perception of time and who we are between the memory of whom we were and who will we be.
Cutileiro is an artist who chose to live as a composer, although he could have chosen to define himself as an engraver, a cinephile, a philosopher or a writer, instead.
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In the fourth episode of Vortex Temporum podcast, Lei Liang tells us how the work of the Chinese painter Huang Binhong (黄宾虹) became an important source of inspiration to his own work as a composer.
Winner of the Grawemeyer Award and a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music, Lei Liang (Tianjin, 1972) is a Chinese born American composer who combines East and West with mastery in orchestration.
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The third episode of Vortex Temporum brings us back to the world of sound art.
Rather than revealing her dreams, Joanna Bailie involves us in a path of discovery. We bet it is almost impossible not to feel empathetic towards her on this personal journey, disarmingly keeping the listener on the threads of her warm voice.
From the most harmless or pleasant dreams to some disquieting ones, we think we get to know a little bit of Joanna's inner self. But isn't this simply a piece of art? Yet, isn't art something that reveals the artist the most?
Joanna Bailie (London, 1973) is a Berlin based British composer whose works seems to push us out of the time dimension. She studied at the Institute of Sonology (Den Haag) and at Columbia University, before completing her PhD at City, University of London. Her work has been performed at events such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Venice Biennale, Huddersfield, MaerzMusik, Musica Strasbourg and Darmstadt, by ensembles and solo musicians from around Europe. Her recent work includes chamber music and installation and it is characterized by the use of manipulated field recordings and other sound media together with acoustic instruments. She is also interested in the interplay between the audio and visual as evidenced by her works incorporating camera obscura and film.
Joanna co-founded Plus-Minus Ensemble (2003). She was the guest curator at the SPOR Festival in Aarhus (2010) and she curated and produced the Cut and Splice Festival for BBC Radio 3 (2015). She has taught at various institutions (HMDK Stuttgart, University of London, among others) and festivals such as the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music.
She is the guest composer at Aveiro_Síntese biennale 2022 (Portugal).
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The second episode of Vortex Temporum is brought to us by Luso-Spanish composer Inés Badalo (Olivença, 1989). Inés tells us about a few artists that interest her – the work of Sebastião and Lélia Salgado (namely ‘Genesis’), Pawel Pawlikowski (director of ‘Ida’ [2013] and ‘Cold War’ [2018]) and Paolo Sorrentino (director of ‘La Grande Bellezza’ [2013]). In parallel she gives us a glimpse on her own music, with excerpts of ‘Vortex‘ [2020] and ‘Entropia‘ [2017].
Inés Badalo has been performed in series like Festival Mixtur, Aula de (Re)estrenos da Fundación Juan March, Mishima Contemporary Music Days (Japan), Contemporanea – Festival di Nuova Música (Italy), Halleiner Gitarrenfestival (Austria), Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik (Germany), by ensembles such as Orquestra Gulbenkian, Plural Ensemble, hand werk ensemble, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Ensemble vocal Soli-Tutti, Ensemble Sonido Extremo, Neopercusión, Ensemble Mikrokosmos, Orquesta de Extremadura and ars ad hoc, among many others.
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In the first episode of Vortex Temporum podcast, Peter Ablinger reflects on what might a podcast be. Finally, he does music, because music is all he can do. He does it brilliantly, like the genius he is.
Peter Ablinger (Schwanenstadt, 1959) is an Austrian composer, a leading figure of our time, someone who can always surprise us. Even when we think we don't expect anything but a simple surprise, he can really surprise us. Just listen to it and enjoy.
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