These days I am speaking with the Chilean conductor Juan Pablo Izquierdo about composing a piece for the Chilean Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta de Camera de Chile. It is a fine orchestra founded by the late Fernando Rosas about 30 years ago, and Juan Pablo Izquierdo is an excellent conductor, with a strong background in contemporary music. Among many other things, he recorded a brilliant version of Xenakis’ Dämmerschein in 1997.

Juan Pablo Izquierdo

I’ll be using the score feature tool to guide the work’s communicative expression, and it will be the largest body of musicians that I will be applying this to. It is my intention to include more categories, and to make each of the eight expression points in the 2D filed selectable. This will provide much more flexibility in usage, and I am considering using different expression simultaneously, distributing the expression categories among two to three groups of players at the time. Another parameter to consider is phrase length (or another aspect of phrasing such as phrase arc), as phrasing should be more prominent in the tool’s response to each emotion.

I did in fact compose a piece for the Chilean Chamber Orchestra, namely the single movement work Shake Off Slumber and Beware composed and premiered in 2000.