Introduction

 

“…the girl felt that she had found something long hidden in the darkness of her own heart.”

 

— The Tattooer, Junichiro Tanizaki

 

MINIMAL UMBRA is a project dedicated to the music of composer Susan Campos-Fonseca.  The EP brings together recordings made by artists and researchers all over the world. This is an open laboratory, in continual growth, to which the composer adds new works.

 

The project began with the work “Sphinx,” recorded by New York Based, Colombian composer and pianist Julián de la Chica, and "Gemido" a Remix by Costa Rican sound artist, Alejandro Sánchez Núñez. "Gemido" is the Butoh Meditations No. 5 for wind quintet and it was recorded by the HARIA Quintet (Spain), under the artistic direction of Salvador Barberá Juanes with Mar Morales Martinez as flute soloist. The Remix include a poem by Russian writer Anna Ajmátova, recited by Ilona Miller (Russia - NYC). Both pieces of video art form two parts of a whole, united here, filmed in NYC and Costa Rica.

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These two works are the pillars of an autoethnographic sound exploration by the composer.  The cover of the EP, by Costa Rican artist Daniel Ellis – two images of the same little girl taking off their masks, exposing their personal abysses, their dark material, their dark holes – dialogues with this purpose.

 

The EP brings together works resulting from the artistic research of Susan Campos-Fonseca, dedicated to the study of the sonority of shadows, inspired by In Praise of Shadows by Japanese writer Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965). This research is also guided by the poetry of Anna Ajmátova, Silvia Castro Méndez, Hector Burke, William Blake, the writings of Eduardo Chillida and the author herself.

 

All of the works included in MINIMAL UMBRA are world premiere recordings or new extended versions.  This project relies on the collaboration of Bernal Chaves and El Sótano's Laboratorio de Experimentación Sonora (LES) (Amón Solar, Costa Rica).

 

MINIMAL UMBRA, inaugurating the Irreverence Group Music Composer’s Lab, is a space created with the objective of promoting exploration, research, and collaboration between artists dedicated to sound experimentation.