In focus

Ângela da Ponte · © Alípio Padilha

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Questionnaire/ Interview

· Describe your family, culture, sound, and music roots, highlighting one or various essential aspects defining and constituting who you are today. ·

Ângela da Ponte: I was born to a family without any professional connection to the arts. However, since very early, I was influenced by my father, who, in family reunions, was always in to sing and improvise. He did not miss the opportunity to sing along if someone was playing the guitar.
When he was young, my father was part of various cultural projects in his village, and naturally, he passed his passion for music to me. Later, I was the one not missing the opportunity to play along (with the violin) with family members and to improvise with him. My grandmother, who always lived with us, also used to sing when she was cooking. My first music memories and influences have their origin there.
Then, the admission at the Ponta Delgada Conservatoire was another essential step in defining this path of no return! I studied violin, completing music with ABRSM 8^th level. At the Ponta Delgada Conservatoire, I had a demanding training, rich experiences and contact with different music realities despite the geographical constraints that the internet presently diminishes. It was crucial to have teachers who were very demanding for studying and appealing for a high musical standard. And, of course, I emphasise the contact with Ana Paula Andrade at the high-school level – she opened the path to what I am now doing.

· When did you understand you would dedicate your creative and artistic activity to composition? ·

AdP: Continuing the previous answer, I was still at the Regional Conservatory of Ponta Delgada when I understood I wanted to follow composition. I had some small ‘inventions’ (as my violin teacher – Shelley Ross – used to say), but I didn’t understand the composer’s activity or professional composition.
I consolidated this passion at the high-school level when I had contact with the Analysis and Composition Techniques course. I believe it happens with most conservatory and academy students when they go to this course. When studying, analysing, and exploring the creative component, one glimpses a possibility of composition, which is hidden. Since then, it has been a natural process: entering higher education, etc.

· Do you follow your path according to a plan? For example, do you know that within ‘x’ years, you will realise the ‘y’ aims? Or do you think the reality is too chaotic to create such determinations? ·

AdP: Although life is full of surprises, it is essential to have goals. It is out of my control if they are realised or not. But goals are always positive because they oblige us to have something significant: discipline. Without this component, I would not have achieved some goals. Obviously, some unforeseen events also happen and can contribute to new opportunities. However, the creation of objective goals is essential. We should have a plan but not let it be too rigorous, not constraining positive surprises from happening. For example, in 2021, with friends and colleagues, we created the Prolíficas – Association and Community of Female Composers of the Azores; and I wasn’t expecting it. But presently we are realising the 2^nd edition of the Prolífica Festival, in São Miguel Island! And it is magnificent because we are constructing something extraordinary and beautiful.

· What are your present artistic and creative concerns? ·

AdP: During the last ten years, I have been leaning over traditional Portuguese music, particularly the Azorean one, in an unconventional context, reinterpreting traditional elements within contemporary music using diverse instrumental groups and including electronic components. Although I continue to want to work on this issue, mainly writing more repertoire dedicated to the viola da terra in a different context, recently, many musicians have challenged me to compose for an instrument and electronics medium, for example, the Electroville Jukebox. Gradually, I have been focusing my writing on the interaction between the acoustic and the electroacoustic, the discovery and exploration of different configurations of the instruments in space and their implication in a composition.

· To what extent has the circulation between the acoustic and electroacoustic universes enriched the music creation in the last decades? Is there any influence of these two practices in your music? ·

AdP: It has enriched the music in different manners. In the scientific and research context, it has allowed us to better understand the acoustic behaviour of the instruments and to develop new tools that allow a detailed analysis of the sonic phenomenon and its processing, resulting in new sounds of impressive quality. In the creative context, we can say that it has enhanced the possibilities. Nowadays, besides the traditional-literature knowledge on orchestration, many composers can also apply the technological knowledge, allowing them to achieve other sound combinations based on the electroacoustic universe, such as orchestration supported by the Orchidea software.
Undoubtedly, these two practices influence my music. As I referred to in the previous answer, at this moment, I am focused on composing music where the electroacoustic and instrumental worlds coexist. Naturally, these two worlds influence each other to create a discourse justified in terms of timbre.

· What are the extramusical sources that, in your case, serve as a starting point, inspiration, or support for the music composition? ·

AdP: The sources can be books, sometimes abstract concepts, which help me to outline a music idea, or wordplays exploring multiple meanings (the latter probably by the influence of Miguel Azguime!). They can also be suggestions of the entities that commission the work. For example, the project composed for the 2^nd Leiria Creative City Festival, whose title is “Movement & Illusion”, was inspired by the M[I]MO (Movement and Image Museum) since the festival required new pieces inspired by the city’s architectonic heritage. The work unfolds around this simple idea of movement, using almost always the same chord but in different registers and inversions.

· To what extent do the new electronic and digital instruments open new paths, and when can they become constraining? ·

AdP: As with everything, new instruments are only tools in the user’s hands. They open new paths when we are predisposed to explore diverse combinations, sometimes in an illogical way, but whose results are fascinating. They can also become constraining when these instruments are unlimited. The limits oblige us to get the most remarkable solutions.

· In what sense are research and invention inseparable elements of music creation and art? ·

AdP: Invention leads to research and vice versa. One nourishes the other one. Many creators think their art is not research, but it is not true. There is always a research element, no matter how small it is. Then, there are external examples and stunningly inventive artistic works. Leonardo da Vinci and Vermeer left us incredible works of art, and this is due to their research and for having allied it with invention and artistic creation. Music is never only indeed music. It is science, literature, movement, and colour. We learn a lot when taking another perspective. Something new emerges in the intersection between areas.

· How do you listen to music? Is it a more rational or emotional process? ·

AdP: At this moment, I cannot separate the two processes. Perhaps because they belong to the core of my craft. Understanding the sonic construction of something to produce a kind of reaction/ sensation, no matter how simple it is, as a surprise, for example, is something that composers always look for.

· In the MIC.PT interview from 2016 composer João Madureira said that ‘music is philosophy, politics, and a way of inhabiting the world’ ¹. Do you feel close to this affirmation? ·

AdP: As I previously responded, music is never closed within itself. It is a way of being in the world. No matter how much we want to say that our ‘work is neither political nor philosophical’, it is impossible because it always reveals a point of view.

· Is there a ‘profession-vocation’ opposition in your activity? ·

AdP: No! I feel lucky, sometimes blessed, to be able to pursue my vocation.

· Do you prefer to work isolated in ‘the calmness of the countryside’ or the middle of the ‘urban confusion’? ·

AdP: I enjoy living in Porto because I can access a diverse cultural and gastronomic spectrum. But even though Porto is an urban centre, I prefer working isolated in silence. I live in a part of the city that is calm for now.

· Choose and highlight three works from your catalogue and justify your choice. ·

AdP: I choose three pieces from different periods, but which delimit essential situations in my path and development as a composer: “Sketches” for viola da terra and ensemble, written in 2015 during my PhD, “We can’t breathe” for flute and electronics composed in 2021 and “Echoes from a near future” for saxophone quartet and electronics written in 2022.
In “Sketches”, apart from learning to reconcile tradition with the present, I comprehended other orchestrating forms and consolidated long-looked-for aesthetic aspects. I have always liked a subtle and delicate sonority and, at the same time, contrasting zones with a lot of intensity and noise. Balancing these two aspects has recently been my focus.
In “We can’t breathe”, I continued exploring these aspects in a mixed music context.
Lastly, the work “Echoes from a near future” for the Sigma Project Quartet (a Spanish quartet that premiered the piece in May 2023 at the O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon during the Música Viva Festival) was the culmination of this search. This work has won the Ibermúsicas competition in the ‘Composition and Work’s Premiere’ category.

· Could you reveal what you are presently working on and your 2024 projects ·

AdP: In 2024, I will do two artistic residencies. In January, I will participate in a project entitled “9 Aldeias. Um Povo” (9 Villages. 1 People), promoted by the Wind Band of Loivos and invited by conductor Luciano Pereira. It is a project that received a grant from the DgArtes. The aim is to dynamize the Wind Band of Loivos and the villages of the Trás-os-Montes region. I will visit a village and work with the resident community to draw inspiration from their traditions and to compose a work for the Wind Band of Loivos and a community choir.
In February, I will do an artistic residency at the Arquipélago – Contemporary Arts Centre to create a sound installation exploring the concept of magnetic force through the interaction with the space and some objects dispersed in this very space. The residency entitled “Magnetic Fields” will facilitate the search for an organic sonic entity modifying the soundscape.

· What would the alternative paths have been if you hadn't followed composition?·

AdP: Music has always been my most substantial and solid path during my studies. However, if I had not followed the music path for some reason, I would have chosen fine arts or design. This world also fascinates me; perhaps subconsciously, it shapes my music creation.

· In a 2020 interview, composer Georg Friedrich Haas said: ‘The new art creators act as yeast in the society’ ². In your opinion, what is the role art music plays in society, and how can one increase the importance and impact of this role?·

AdP: Art does not seem to have any immediate importance as it deals with abstract aspects; thus, attributing an absolute value to it is difficult. We live in a society that increasingly wants to know the economic value of an object and the economic impact of something. Everything must be fast and with the right formula, without much space for reflection and experimentation. However, the people going against this tendency find something unique, and by having an opportunity to expose themselves, they change the course of history. Their work can only suggest an alternative to the present reality. What Haas said is true; in art, we find what we often do not have directly in life – freedom.
I can only see the increase in its importance through education and significant visibility, at least regarding mass communication (newspapers, radio, and television). This answer relates to the previous affirmation by João Madureira about the stance and inhabiting the world. It is impossible to say that we want an inclusive and balanced society when one gives more importance to one area at the expense of the other. We reduce investment in education, and areas we think will not give anything in return in the future. However, new things emerge in the art and its connection with other areas.

Ângela da Ponte, November-December, 2023
© MIC.PT

FOOTNOTES

¹ Interview with João Madureira conducted by the MIC.PT in October 2016 and available at: LINK.
² Interview with Georg Friedrich Haas conducted by Filip Lech in June 2020 and available on the Culture.pl website: LINK.

Ângela da Ponte · In the 1^st Person Interview (in Portuguese)

Ângela da Ponte · Playlist