Release date: 27 October 2023
London’s Riot Ensemble present Leçons de ténèbres, a landmark portrait album of Patricia Alessandrini. Covering the most significant instalments of her creative output across the last fifteen years, Leçons de ténèbres showcases Riot Ensemble’s extensive experience in experimental performance, bringing us five works that fuse concert music aesthetics with electronic processing.
Often starting with a pre-existing piece of music, Patricia Alessandrini utilises electronic processes to distort and filter audio recordings to find radical musical deviations from the source, transcribing the results for new instrumental forces. Her music engages critically with the Western musical canon and notions of style through her approach to representation, interpretation, and perception. The music that emerges from this process feels as though its meaning is submerged beneath water, with precise musical gestures seemingly wrapped in layers of fog or obscured by a series of veils, as if reaching us from far away, shrouded in dust or cobwebs from the archives of musical history.
Alessandrini's works have been presented in the Americas, Asia, Australia, and over fifteen European countries, in festivals such as Archipel, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Electric Spring, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Heidelberger Frühling, Gaudeamus, Mostly Mozart, Musica Strasbourg, Rainy Days, Ruhrtriennale, Salzburg Biennale, TimeSpans, Wien Modern and Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. She holds two PhDs, from Princeton University and the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) respectively, and has taught Composition and Computer Music at the Accademia Musicale Pescarese, Bangor University, Goldsmiths College, and Stanford University.
AUDIO
REVIEWS
"Darkly evocative stuff," BBC Radio 3 New Music Show
"It is undeniable that, technically, these Alessandrini recordings are supremely well crafted, and the performances radiate a dedicated concern to do the music justice." Gramophone
RECORDING CREDITS
Riot Ensemble:
Richard Craig flute [4,5]
Lauren Weavers oboe [4,5]
Sam Wilson percussion [1,2]
Andy Connington trombone [1]
Angela Wai Nok Hui percussion [4,5]
Pétur Jónasson guitar [2]
Ausiàs Garrigós clarinet [2,4,5]
Oliver Pashley clarinet [1]
Kate Walter flute [1]
Sarah Dacey soprano [1]
Claudia Maria Racovicean piano [4,5]
Mandhira De Saram violin [3-5]
Sarah Saviet violin [2,3]
John Garner violin [1]
Stephen Upshaw viola [1,3,5]
Louise McMonagle cello [1-5]
Marianne Schofield double bass [1,4]
Patricia Alessandrini electronics [1-5]
Aaron Holloway-Nahum conductor [1,4,5]
Recorded at Phipps Hall, University of Huddersfield on December 1-5, 2019 and October 22-23, 2022
Tracks 1-3 recorded by Aaron Holloway-Nahum
Tracks 4 and 5 recorded by Felipe Gutierrez
Tracks 1, 4 and 5 co-produced by Patricia Alessandrini
Edited and mixed by Aaron Holloway-Nahum
Additional production by Douglas McCausland
Mastered by Murat Çolak at Geryon Sound
Special thanks to Beth Beauchamp
Catalogue number: HCR30
Release date: 27 October 2023