Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

Golden Aspen is a piece for amplified flute and electronics (fixed-media) composed in 2017 by the composer Levy Oliveira. The piece has been presented in different international festivals such as EMUFest 2017 (Rome/Italy), IV Festival Internacional de Música Electroacústica (Santiago/Chile), Electronic Music Week - Mise-En Place (New York/USA), Festival Ai-Maako 2019 (Santiago/Chile) and TAMA Music and Arts Festival (Tokyo/Japan) by performers such as Rodrigo Frade (Brazil), Elena D’alò (Italy), Patricio de la Cuadra (Chile), Kelley Barnett (USA), Gabriella Roderer (USA) and Natalia Martorel (Chile). It was composed in the composer’s personal studio and at the Research Center of Contemporary Music of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte/Brazil).
The proposed presentation aims to analyse the compositional procedures employed in the piece. The analysis will focus on the relations between micro and macro structure focusing on motivic development, formal articulation, timbre exploration and interaction between acoustic instrument and electronic media. In the oral presentation, it will be explained how the motivic organisation of the piece uses a technique entitled by Pierre Boulez as Pavlov’s Reflex to enhance the perception of functionality on its internal structures. Moreover, I will also stress the importance of timbre not only on the delineation of Golden Aspen's macrostructure but also how timbre is used to create the idea of development and movement, changing the western traditional hierarchy in which harmony plays the most important role in the development of musical structures. Having in mind the structural importance of timbre, the electronic media is an important asset to expand the possibilities of timbre exploration on Golden Aspen.
After conducting an analysis of the structural procedures employed in Golden Aspen, the piece will be performed by the Brazilian flutist Rodrigo Frade. The performance will be a pre-recorded video and it aims to give a better understanding on how the analysed techniques sounds in the context of the whole piece.