“Love” a tragic etude

“In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted…”
Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream

The Method

Usually when I write for theater I begin making the script’s main theme. I read it a couple of times, write down the emotions I get and research all the relevant aspects. A few ideas arrive to my head.

In Love, the main theme evokes a light, carefree mood of innocence. For months it went this way => F-B#-C#-B-G in a 5×8 over F# Major.

Once I got the main theme done I write the main characters’ music and recreate the scenes I found strongest. These steps have helped me cover a big part of the play in relatively short time, even though the rehearsals tend to be a surprise to the composition.

The Concept

For one of the characters I used the main melody, now with an aggressive and more determined point of view. Mutating the main theme helps giving consistency to the play and linking emotions among scenes. Military Chief 1.mp3

I also wanted to link the music of each character to its representation of power so I could easily decouple them. Military Chief 2.mp3

In Love the image of the play would be far more realistic than I thought on each reading (Three Soldiers.mp3 – The Reunion.mp3), so I left the written sketches as they were- rough and in some way more tangible. At rehearsals I began working with textures; I began experimenting with sticks inside the piano which increased the tension and emotional contrast of the text.

Love, musically and spontaneously, turned into an etude in the second season after not finding a counterbass and having to adapt the score to solo piano.

The Demo

Main Theme

Love.mp3

The Shows

June 9-11,  2005.
Centro Cultural Corp Group.
CCS, Venezuela

April 28-30, 2006.
Columbia University (Schapiro Theatre)
605 West 115th Street (between Broadway and Riverside)
New York, USA

November 27- December 16, 2006.
Kraine Theater. (LaMaMa E.T.C., in its Annex Theatre at 74A East 4th Street.)
New York, USA.

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A Review

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Cast and Crew

Love was conceived and directed by Juan Souki
Aryeh Lappin, K.K. Maggie, Kate LoConti, Melinda Helfrich, Isaac Woofter & William Fenderson / Jeremy Bobb & Gil Bar-Sela

Score by Xavier Losada
Piano: Xavier Losada / Thomas Channel
Stop-motion: Alejandro Armas
Graphic Design: Alex Wright
Video Design: Luber Mujica.
Lighting Design: Bryan Keller
Costume Design: Amelia Dombrowski

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Love is probably the play that has given me the most emotion, depletion, introspection, development and at certain moments even frustration - A great experience.

 

Amusia - La Uña, El Martillo & The Impossible Thoughts

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear.”
John Cage

I. The song started as a research of noise, rhythm and melody interpreting certain amusia‘ degrees.

II. Later, I saw The Rest is Noise. The title inmediately made me think it would be part of the theme.

III. With a half-read book I started to write. 4:33 by John Cage would give shape and sense to the composition.

Amusia walks, minute after minute, between noise, rest & melody until it reachs our surroundings, the no-silence.

…maybe rest.

 

Amusia.mp3

What is rest? What is noise? What is this all about? Sounds & crowd making their way. Just listen, listen their way. Silence.

Thanks Alex Ross for “The Rest is Noise“.

Fateless - acantilado

“Still, even the imagination is not completely unbounded, or at least is unbounded only within limits, I have found.”
Imre Kertész, Fateless

The book

Imre Kertész - Fateless
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2002

The Song

 

After a minute, between fate and illusion, emerges the obstinatto, a melody that reminds of me sitting on stage at the piano, just about longing.

Immediately after, the piano and percussion begin to tell the truth, a reality that seems to hit but you don’t understand, you live.

Later on anguish’ textures shows up. I’ll never forget the image of soles pasted to the skin. Feet and wood made one. The uncertainty is there, always accompanying.

When in the theme I start to wander, to look back and think in destiny I call immersed the day-to-day life, the freedom and the fateless. With them goes otherness, a path that we feel but don’t predict.

The beginning… heroic and enigmatic as the end.

Sin Destino.mp3

 

Draft of dry land - Escritorio

I didn’t believe in the devil until I heard those drums, drums beaten by three dead and a lifeless. Scary King Vulture was no more. It was mandinga and my deceased dance. My feet trembled to the rhythm of the hands of those three lifeless and a dead. Stalking King Vulture was no more. I sweated over fire and danced ‘til dawn; I thought maybe this devil is me made drum, made rhythm, made free.

One drum stopped, I find no rest. Another one stopped, “What’s happening?” and I keep dancing. No screams. No drums. I think of mandinga, and turn around. No life. No drum. King Vulture has killed us.*

When I first heard Venezuela - Chants et tambours des confréries noires I decided to write a theme with Venezuelan drums. I started collecting sounds of drums and percussion sticks.

In the meantime the scope of the theme took shape: A tribute to Arturo Uslar Pietri’s short stories, specially to “El Rey Zamuro” (The King Vulture) and “El baile del tambor” (The dance of the drum), embodying the idea of a rich and incomplete country, a draft of a country. I ought to give an uncertain destiny to those sketches.

That’s the reason of mandinga, King Vulture, the deceased dance - a structure that begins and goes back again, a slightly out-of-tune guitar and a rhythm full of tones, textures and colors.

“Bosquejo de Tierra Firme” (Draft of dry land) is part of Escritorio.

Bosquejo de Tierra Firme

* Text: Xavier Losada. English translation by Ceci Egan.

434 a Short Film

“Composing is giving meaning to that stream of sounds that penetrates the world we live in”
Toru Takemitsu

 

Map + Previews

1.- Begins: Hotel entrance + Character Introduction + Room arrival => Unawareness

2.- Encounter: Pool + Her + Conquer => Decision + Motion

3.- Solitude: Awakening + Room + Window => Weirdness

4.- Action: Loneliness + Elevator + Stairs => Tension

5.- Commotion: Loneliness + Leaving stairs + Hallway + Room => Despair + Distress

6.- Introspection: Loneliness + Room => Resignation + Anguish

7(2).- Encounter: Final impression.

 

8(7).- Credits

 

434

Written, Produced & Directed by Javier Pérez-Karam & Leonard Zelig

Music & Sound Design: Xavier Losada

Director of Photography: Javier Pérez-Karam

 

Cast

Him: Leonard Zelig

Her: Tarina Rodríguez

Man: Javier Pérez-Karam

 

Foleys: Gabriel Álvarez & Ricardo Martínez

Graphic Design: Miguel Heberle

Edited by PérezKaram Post

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434 - Showing in 2008 - NYC, USA.

The Man Who Laughs

Are we an accomplice of the cup which deprives us of reason?
Victor Hugo, L’homme Qui Rit.

In the search of creating culture, sometimes I fear reaching a social stratum and marginalize others. How to make this society better? Because maybe we don’t have a way back. It is possible that violence, the outraged innocence and the lost of childhood continue growing without their natural course, do not rest.

The prevailing style of society, which we encourage and with we feel comfortable has been killing us slowly. The style of society that is struggling to impose is, by its nature, aggressive, ruthless when the opportunity shows and remains cruel. Few things would change.

Perhaps someone, maybe Nietzsche, said that the worst mistake of man was to create religion. It was a great mistake, but I believe that our worst mistake is to control us as a society, is to feel earthly power. First I can, then I believe.

With the passing of time, with the return of cycles, and confined in this increasingly limited (finite) space, men stinks decadence. It’s impossible not to feel shame for us, pride for a few … stinks decadence.

How far should we go? Many of us didn’t begin any venture. Many of us think that our role as human beings is to live and grow in society. Many believe that there should be an end to much of it. Some of us think that there is no living person acting in response to his environment, thinking about the sustainability of other species. The preservation of favored ones… My kind. In all aspects things goes out of our hands. We want to finish with our world.

How far should we go? Until everything sediment.

The man who laughs.

The Theme

El hombre que ríe.mp3

Journey of One - embas

 

from the album Suburbia.

When Francisco Sapene (Bass Guitar) asked me to produce his new album I went to a rehearsal and listened to embas. They caught my attention immediately. The songs were very interesting and the band seemed to have each rol well-defined. A few days after we were producing.

Going out of my studio while recording acantilado and starting a project with six musicians and their compositions was a very refreshing and valuable experience.

The song

 Journey of One.mp3

The credits

Journey of One 

Music: Carlos Rosales, Frank Sapene, Leonardo Jenkins and Ruyman Gilbert

Bass: Francisco Sapene

Acoustic Guitar: Leonardo Jenkins

Electric Guitar: Carlos Rosales

Drums: Ruyman Gilbert

Violin: Carlos A. Báez

Keys: Miguelangel Maduro and Xavier Losada

Recording, Mixing & Mastering: Ricardo Martínez in Remoto Estudio

Produced by Xavier Losada

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Since suburbia I work with Ricardo Martínez (Wahala) in Remoto Estudio.

La Muerte de Empédocles - acantilado

…tries to decipher certain mysteries that did not glimpse at their moment.

The Books

After recording Escritorio and soon to start the production of embas‘ Suburbia, I began to work with 4 books published by biblioteca del acantilado

Resting - Attila Bartis

Fateless - Imre Kertész

Death of Empedocles - Frederich Hölderlin

Inferno - August Strindberg

The result was a 8 theme EP (each theme is presented mastered and remastered) were I placed my interpretation of each tale. The title: acantilado

Death of Empedocles

La muerte de Empédocles.mp3

Empédocles is surrounded by his disciples, is being loved and rejected. We can hear him advanced to his time, thoughtful on reflection… always trying to generate it. We can follow him climbing Mount Etna, between ideas and nature, until his final speech and departure.

He dies alone and immortalizes himself in solitude.

The Phrase

“¡Olvido!…¡Oh, como una vela venturosa

me desprendo de la costa, y la ola de la vida

por sí sola me deja!”

Friedrich Hölderlin.

As a part of the composition exercise, on each theme of acantilado I putted a phrase that obstinately joins the rest. Here, it can be easily identified. It represents the people assimilation, over adaptation, to Empedocles’ ideas.

In the theme our main character is never understood.

Toru’s Garden - La Uña, El Martillo & The Impossible Thoughts

“…many compositional ideas came to me from old Japanese gardens… I love gardens. They do not reject people. There one can walk freely, pause to view the entire garden, or gaze at a single tree. Plants, rocks, and sand show changes, constant changes.”
Toru Takemitsu

The Theme

Toru’s Garden.mp3

The Concept

Toru Takemitsu developed the idea of interpreting garden strolls through compositions. He assigned different rolls to each group of the orchestra while the piano walks and observes.

Departing from essays like Mirror and Egg and a composition exercise commissioned by Gerry Weil, I placed a touched walker stood in the middle of a garden which is slowly changing.

The theme develops between the “passer-by” (F), represented by the main piano, and the garden - piano and guitar. Among them is a piano-tuner, the time (C), who approaches, dripping, little by little.

As he observes, analyzes and assimilates, he mutates. The perception of time is always changing.

With the passing of events, the garden, the time and we become one.

MDE - Escritorio

“Today I had the estrange sensation of,

While remembering something,

Feeling that I already lived it”

The Story

After writing theater music for about seven years I started my first composition and recording exercise without a script as a headline. The result: noticeably incidental. I created the main theme of soon-to-create stories without realizing it.

That first exercise ended as eight themes that tell, among others, an intense year of my life. I called it: Escritorio.

MDE (stands for typewriter in Spanish) is Escritorio’s first theme and is inspired by the moment a writer, composer or artist starts to create, to make tangible any idea, when he concentrates a lot of memories and ideas and, by moments, feels fluidity at creating.

MDE drives the beginning of a series of introspections behind the piano, the guitar and a computer, as well as the production of themes at the solitude of my room. Every song I’ve recorded until today, for acantilado; El hombre que ríe; La uña, el martillo & The Impossible Thoughts or any other project owes something to MDE.

The Music

MDE.mp3