Río de la Plata Apocalypse

Action-concert + conversations on music, sound and territory

Martín Virgili

Guests: Eduardo Molinari, Ensamble Vocal UNTREF

Program

Friday, November 15, 3–6 pm — Conversations + dress rehearsal. Conservatorio Superior de Música Manuel de Falla, Main Campus, Gallo 238, Room 11.

Friday, November 15, 8:30 pm — Río de la Plata Apocalypse concert. Costanera.

Presentation

“The landscape on which identity is supposedly built is not solid ground: it’s made of memories and desires, not of earth and stone — just like songs.” — Rebecca Solnit

In February 2022, on the rooftop of the Edificio Quintana, we staged Apocalipsis Monserrate, an action for percussion, sirens and whistle ensemble directed at the mountains surrounding Bogotá. I had already been carrying the idea of stepping away from composing for humans and trying other things with sound and music. Around that project I grew interested in the roars of sea lions (Otaria flavescens) and the whistles of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), and learned from these distant relatives that perhaps that music for the mountains was the echo of an ancestrality running through me, one I can build sonic things with.

For this gathering I’d like to share some ideas and projects around art and territory, around the fascination, introspection and love that landscapes summon in us — while also examining how their forces work their way inside us, conditioning our listening, our thinking, our politics. In this vein, we premiere Apocalipsis Río, for percussion, sirens and whistle ensemble: a tribute concert dedicated to the Río de la Plata, to its beauty and its tragedies.

Participants

Ensamble Vocal UNTREF, Ensamble Negra 40, Mariano Losi, Camila Juárez, Violeta Juárez, Pablo Jivotovschii, Inés Sabatini, Javier Bustos, Julián Teubal, Eduardo Molinari, Fernando Ciarlo.

Support

Conservatorio Superior de Música Manuel de Falla, Negra40, Suena Washington.