In January, in the first 2024 In Focus, the MIC.PT presents a new interview with Ângela da Ponte to mark the 40th anniversary of this composer, teacher, and researcher.
Ângela da Ponte has a PhD from the University of Birmingham and resides in Porto. The acknowledgement of her work includes presentations of her music at various festivals, such as Visiones Sonoras 2016, Audiokineza, Kulturfabrik – 33,7, or Música Viva. Her main distinctions encompass the 2011 nomination for the Young Composer-In-Residence at the Casa da Música, the representation of Portugal at the 67th International Rostrum of Composers, the Ibermúsicas 2022 Prize in the Composition and Premiere Category, and the selection for the ISCM World New Music Days 2023 festival. Ângela da Ponte is interested in working with the sound as a deep listening experience in various forms, including the instrumental, mixed and acousmatic means. One of her focuses is the exploration of the intersection between traditional music and new music creation. In this sense, she pioneered the inclusion of the viola da terra in the contemporary music universe.
This month, visit the MIC.PT In Focus section with a new interview with Ângela da Ponte.

David Miguel’s new work will premiere at the end of January in the context of the Contemporary Opera Creation Lab promoted by the Inestética – Culture Association for New Ideas. The new piece by this composer published by the MIC.PT, entitled Deligere, is a mini-opera for soprano, baritone, flute, saxophone, viola and cello, based on Almeida Garrett’s poem, Gozo e Dor (1853). The work’s presentations, performed by Patrícia Modesto (soprano) and Rui Beata (baritone), will occur on January 27 and 28 at the Sobralinho Palace in Vila Franca de Xira. ‘In poetry, I find immense potential to work in music. I appreciate the challenge to find means to describe or represent stories and emotions’ – says David Miguel in the 2019 MIC.PT interview. And he adds: ‘There are themes that are always present and have to do with my personality. Death, horror, pain, love, lament are present in a literal or implicit form, as a permanent presence of the darkness and gloom.’

The work Peça com Vista (2018) by Diogo Alvim (a composer published by the MIC.PT) is part of the recital by the organist and composer Cláudio de Pina on January 7 at the Nossa Senhora da Ajuda Church in Lisbon. The programme of this organ and electronics concert entitled ECHOES OF THE FUTURE: In the Short 12-month Number, will also include the music of La Monte Young, Mauricio Kagel, and of Cláudio de Pina himself (the 2023 piece, Quasi-Lontano). Originally composed for piano, Diogo Alvim’s Peça com Vista has a graphic score based on a view of a square in the centre of Lisbon. The composer says: ‘One can perform this graphic translation of a place in all its possible connotations – the extensive sky crossed with contours of dispersed clouds, the wavy eaves as an ascending trill, a small human figure as a chord, or a bird as a note. The possibilities are multiple, but not infinite as this particular view suggests a specific urban situation.’

The premiere of the new opera, És a madrugada pura e sem ruína, o meu verbo e a minha carne, by Diogo da Costa Ferreira (a composer published by the MIC.PT) is scheduled at the end of January, at the performances organised in the context of the Contemporary Opera Creation Lab. These will include the participation of the soprano Patrícia Modesto and the baritone Rui Beata and occur on the 27th and 28th at the Sobralinho Palace in Alverca. The Lab is an initiative by the Inestética – Culture Association for New Ideas aiming to stimulate the creation of new operas and explore new production and composition models. During the Lab, with artistic direction by Carlos Marecos (a composer published by the MIC.PT) and the director Alexandre Lyra Leite, the participants develop individual projects, mini-operas for two voices and a 4-element instrumental ensemble. Since its foundation in 1999, the Inestética has focused on unconventional opera creation and production models, introducing new and innovative artistic methodologies.

The piece Dança, onde estás?, a collaboration between the choreographers and artists Né Barros and Jorge Gonçalves will have its premiere on January 18. The performance, running until the 20th, will occur at the Palco do Auditório of the Municipal Theatre in Porto. The music authors for this performance for the youth are Brendan Hemsworth and Filipe Lopes (a composer published by the MIC.PT). Inspired by the short story Giraffes Can’t Dance by Guy Parker-Rees and Giles Andreae, the piece is, as its creators say, ‘an expedition to find what attracts us to dance, what we haven’t yet discovered and what is strangely different for everyone’. Filipe Lopes said in the 2016 MIC.PT interview: ‘Composers have an important role in perpetuating the music composition activity as a form of research, emancipation and, above all, as a way of exercising freedom. When composing music for a film or theatre piece, it’s natural that I let this universe and the people that are its part contaminate me. However, composing music is very intimate and supported in listening.’

The work Fluxus, Transitional Flow (2013) by Jaime Reis (a composer published by the MIC.PT) will have its performance on January 23 during the 3rd Multimedia Festival Biomechanics at the Moscow Conservatory in Russia. ‘This work belongs to the Fluxus cycle, with pieces inspired in physics and where I develop music elements related to physics phenomena that have to do with the mechanics of the liquids’ – says Jaime Reis in the programme notes. And he continues: ‘Other pieces from this cycle are Fluxus, Lift, Fluxus, Dimensionless Sound, Fluxus, Drag, Fluxus, pas trop haut dans le ciel and Fluxus, Vortex – Schubkraft. In this piece, commissioned by the International Spring Music Festival in Viseu, I used recorded plane sounds from the Aeroclube in Torres Vedras and synthesis techniques referring to the idea of music flux, starting in the viola and expanding towards the electronics. Some transitions move from the elements closer to the instrumental and musical material (as if one had to do with a laminar flux, from a physical perspective) towards more unpredictable ones, such as a turbulent flux. It generates a constant transition play between different music materials.’

For João Pedro Oliveira (a composer published by the MIC.PT), 2023 has ended with several distinctions in various competitions. For the video music Coalescence (2021) and the audiovisual opera The 70th Week (2022), the composer won the Digital Media Grand Prize at the See | Me – The Middle Path Open Call. In this context, in March 2024, both pieces will have their presentations in New York. Also in the United States, João Pedro Oliveira received The American Prize in Composition, an award acknowledging and rewarding the best composers residing there. The winning piece was also The 70th Week, within the COVID-19-related category. Additionally, again for the work Coalescence together with the electroacoustic work La Mer Émeraude (2018), the composer also received a distinction in the framework of the Viral Human – Arte pubblica e Metaverso competition, an initiative of the MiRNArte project (Italy). Finally, João Pedro Oliveira received an honourable mention at the Alvarez Chamber Orchestra competition, promoted in association with the Universal Edition, which also distinguished composers from Japan, the United States, Argentina, Germany, and Hungary.

The aria from the opera A Laugh to Cry, La Terre exterminée (2013), the version for soprano and piano, and the work for violin and electronics Point Vermeil (2021), are two pieces by Miguel Azguime (a composer published by the MIC.PT), which will have performances in the first half of January at two Kings’ Concerts. The first one is part of the recital occurring on the 6th at the Cine-Teatro Camacho Costa in Odemira, during which the Komorebi Duo, with the soprano Camila Mandillo and the pianist João Casimiro de Almeida, will present an opera arias programme, from the 17th century until today, and which will also include the music of Antonio Vivaldi, Charles Gounod, Gioachino Rossini, Giuseppe Verdi, Henry Purcell, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Jules Massenet, Richard Strauss and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At this concert, Miguel Azguime will make commentaries and presentations of the pieces. The second work, Point Vermeil, is part of the concert by the Sond’Ar-te Duo – Violin and Cello, during which Vìtor Vieira and Filipe Quaresma will also perform the music of Georg Friedrich Händel, Johann Sebastian Bach and Maurice Ravel. This recital will occur on the 7th at the Auditorium of the Perpetual Philharmonic Society in Azeitão.

In January, the work Sou já do que fui (2019) by Paulo Bastos (a composer published by the MIC.PT) will have presentations in two different countries: the United States of America and Germany. The first performance will occur on January 12 in Newark at the Sport Club Português as part of a New Year’s concert promoted by the Portuguese General Consulate in Newark and dedicated to exploring new trends in Portuguese piano music for four hands. The piece, conceived for this very instrumentation, will have its performance by the Kla-Vier Duo (Patrícia Ventura and Sónia Amaral), who on this occasion will also present the music by Sofia Sousa Rocha (a composer published by the MIC.PT), António Victorino d’Almeida and Claude Debussy. The second performance of Sou já do que fui will take place on January 19 at the Reutlingen Art Museum (Germany). In this case, the performer of this work will be the French-Portuguese Jost-Costa Duo (Yseult Jost and Domingos Costa). The event also includes compositions by other artists, such as Peter Eötvös, Michael Frank Hagemann, György Kurtág, Wolfgang Rihm, Marco Stroppa, Caspar Johannes Walter, as well as premieres by Manuel Durão and Fredrik Zeller.

With the aim to encourage the creation and diffusion of new acousmatic/ electroacoustic works, Miso Music Portugal promotes and organises the 25th edition of the International Electroacoustic Composition Competition – Música Viva 2024. The deadline for the works’ submission is March 31, 2024. The winning work will be announced during the Música Viva 2024 Festival, occurring between May 3 and 11. The jury of the 25th International Electroacoustic Composition Competition – Música Viva 2024 will be announced shortly.

The submissions for the 1st International Lied Composition Competition (Álvaro García de Zúñiga/ Casa de Mateus/ Sond’Ar-te) are open until March 21, 2024. The competition is an initiative by the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble in partnership with the Casa de Mateus Foundation and the blablaLab Cultural Association. The competition is open to composers of any nationality, without age limits. The submitted compositions must be written for a duo, within a combination selected between soprano and the following instruments (with or without electronics): flute, clarinet, violin, cello or piano. The selection of the texts must encompass Álvaro García de Zúñiga’s work. The members of the competition jury are Iris Ter Schiphorst (composer; Germany), Philippe Leroux (composer; France) and Miguel Azguime (composer; Portugal).

The submissions for the 13th edition of the Composition Prize promoted by the Portuguese Author’s Society and Antena 2 are open until July 1, 2024. The Prize promotes and encourages contemporary music creation and disseminates young composers’ work. It’s destined for Portuguese composers, or the ones residing in Portugal for over four years, born on and after January 1, 1989. The submitted works should be for orchestra without soloist(s) and electronics. The premiere of the 1st-award-winning work will occur in the framework of the 14th Young Musicians’ Festival in Lisbon (September 2024).

Since the begining of this month a new In the 1st Person Interview (in Portuguese), with the composer Paulo Bastos, recorded on December 3 2022, is available on the MIC.PT YouTube Channel.
Presently the MIC.PT YouTube Channel contains 28 New Interviews to composers residing in Portugal, realised since 2019; as well as eight Interviews from the MIC.PT Archive, realised between 2003 and 2005.
The New Interviews, conducted by Pedro Boléo, were filmed at the O'culto da Ajuda in Lisbon and realised in the context of the In the 1st Person cycle of the Music Today and Research & Invention Music radio broadcasts, produced by the MIC.PT and Miso Music Portugal for the Antena 2. They constitute a (re)visit to the creative universe of various composers published by the MIC.PT, following the Historical Interviews recorded by the MIC.PT almost 15 years ago. Today they are unique registers of the artistic evolution of each interviewed composer.
In order to access the Interviews (in Portuguese) follow the links below or visit the MIC.PT YouTube Channel.