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“Bramputapsel #1” for solo percussion (2012-2019)
The album begins with a virtuoso piece for solo percussionist “Bramputapsel #1”. The listener will have to believe that it is not performed by an ensemble of percussionists, but by one “many-armed and many-legged man” – “percussion Shiva”. The name of the play does not carry a definite meaning, it is a heap of syllables, a phonetic game, absurd. This shows her character. A mad, mad spirit, yearning for grandiose events, makes its endless run.
The piece begins with a big meditation – 7 minutes of listening to the repeated sound of the hi-hat. This is a “prelude”, a setting for listening to the subsequent “fugue” – the main material of the play. The main concept of the piece is to provide the performer with a sense of a real multidimensional (polyphonic) existence. When the hand is separate from the rest of the body can play jazz “bop”. Legs, dancing in an electroshock step, press four pedals, beating off lively fractions. The left hand – the hypostasis of a lyrical gentle hero who has long lived in Bali – plays gongs, metal plates, bells. The fundamental point here is the division of time flows within one person. Disproportionate, maximally knocked down and non-multiple time. After Bramputapsel’s experience, I know how far these ideas can go when given to a thoughtful and creative performer. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the piece was written in collaboration with percussionist Dmitry Shchelkin: not according to the process of composition, but in the degree of openness with which the performer approached a non-trivial and complex task.
“Sun.Disk.Minotaurus” for ensemble and electronics
The play was written in 2010 against the background of the most happy (the birth of a daughter; there is a dedication in the play) and dramatic events in my life. The play goes to emotional extremes of perception. A super-rigid and volatile flow, weighed down by noise complexes, intensively boring the ear. Hearing-breaking music.
Antique space flooded with nuclear sun. Crete, a scorched square, where the tormenting or suffering Minotaur is preparing for the final battle. Minotaur as the personification of the existing world. With his death, not only the labyrinth will end, but all that exists. And Theseus is a virus that breaks the codes of this world.
The play is built on the principle of a labyrinth. Music, having just begun, again and again returns to the “initial event”, circles around it, cannot tear itself away. Moving through the labyrinth, subject to certain conditions of its structure, the traveler cannot know whether he is moving along a new segment of the path, or is constantly returning to the “loop”.
Another literal reflection of the labyrinth is the listener’s expectation patterns. From a certain moment, the development of the play becomes more complicated, stratified. You can catch a state when it becomes difficult to predict further development: there are many breaks in the path, unexpected spontaneous actions of musicians. Perhaps this leads to a “zero point”, the cancellation of any expectations, the loss of perspective and all movement (“the mad traveler”, no longer looking for a way out of the maze). Waiting for the arrival of the Minotaur gradually gives birth to the Minotaur.
