To wait is to love…?
The musical theater “PENELOPE – A study about waiting” questions the phenomenon of waiting in 9 scenes.
Penelope is chained to the void and bound in time. She waits an eternity for the uncertain return of her husband Odysseus. Perhaps she waits out of unconditional love, perhaps because the virtue of those who wait is all she has left. For 20 years she weaves her waiting room of illusions, exhortations to chastity, distractions in macro and micro perspectives, knots and petrification. Are we there soon?
Penelope, sung by Natasha López, is alone; accompanied only by her faithful geese on the flute (Guillermo González) and cello (Hugo Rannou), the composition by Helena Cánovas Parés and the libretto by Maike Graf.
Yet how alone is Penelope when waiting was and is the pandemic condition?
Is Penelope lonely when the flutist and politician Maria Kalesnikava, who was part of the TRIO vis-à-vis until her imprisonment in September 2020, involuntarily keeps her company while waiting.
Make it stop. Make it never end;
These tones of fragility, these repeated sounds in shifted time, these text loops of painful insights, these suffocated word fragments, this infinite duration without value
and this self harm.

Music, Composition: Helena Cánovas
Libretto and dramaturgy: Maike Graf
Video and video edition: Helena Cánovas and Maike Graf
Original impulse idea: Natasha López

Funded by: MWK (Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Württemberg); Podium Gegenwart (Deutscher Musikrat), funded by BKM e. V. and Deutscher Komponistenverband e. V.
With the kind support of: Stuttgarter Kollektiv für Aktuelle Musik e. V. and GEDOK Stuttgart.

VIRUCIDE describes the dramatic story of an acellular microscopic infectious agent (SARS-CoV-2) from an artistic point of view. It’s a biological drama inspired by the development of the COVID-19 virus in recent years and mainly describes the fight between two protagonists: SARS-CoV-2 and the antidote VIRUCIDE. The music theater performance presents the different phases of the course of the disease of the COVID-19 virus in connection with their social effects and at the same time deals with the social, psychological, political, economic and human dimensions in relation to the consequences. Ultimately, VIRUCIDE is music theater about life and death.

Recording: 25.10 – 7.11.2021 at Bunker Diakonissenplatz Stuttgart
Composition/Live electronics/Video production: Remmy Canedo
Concept/Project management/Artistic direction: Natasha López
Lyrics: Natasha López
Musicians: TRIO vis-à-vis (Guillermo González, flute; Natasha López, voice and violin); Hugo Rannou, violoncello)
Interview: Klaus-Peter Grassnick (Chairman Kultdiak Stuttgart e.V.) Natasha López (Director of TRIO vis-à-vis)
Video documentation: Patricio González
Video edition: Patricio González and Remmy Canedo

A production of Natasha López and Remmy Canedo
Funded by: Kulturamt Stuttgart, Musikfonds e. V., BKM and NEU START KULTUR, MWK (Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Württemberg)
Cooperation partners: SKAM e. V. and FTTS e. V.
With the kind support of: KU-BU.de, Kultdiak Stuttgart e. V.

“If there are power relations that run through the entire social field, it is because there is freedom everywhere (…). In actual many cases, the power relations are so firmly established that they are permanently asymmetrical and the scope for freedom is extremely limited.” (M. Foucault)

The inspiration for this cross-genre piece was the interview with Michel Foucault (French philosopher and sociologist) from 1984 on the subject of “freedom and self-care”. In it, he impressively explains how closely interwoven power and freedom are and that power relations always offer scope for freedom.

“noVOICE – noBODY” questions social clichés, taboos, realities of the majority and minorities and puts into question the metaphysical existence of mankind. The performance confronts us with the feelings that the realization of (un-)freedom triggers in us.
Power and freedom are closely intertwined. The cross-genre piece examines this scope and tension between individuals and in relation to society. “voice” not only means individual articulation with the voice, but also the right to have a say. And “body” not only stands for the individual body, but also for society.
In episodic scenes, the artists involved use the body, the voice and the musical instruments as an extension to the voice to explore the various effects that power and (un)freedom produce. These effects are reflected not least in the (un)restricted freedom of movement.

Premiere: 25.07.2019, Musik der Jahrhunderte, Theaterhaus (Stuttgart, Germany)
WORLD PREMIERE. Commissioned from TRIO vis-à-vis
Composition/Live electronics/Video: Remmy Canedo
Artistic direction/Choreography: Alexandra Mahnke
Concept/Project management: Natasha López
Yahi Nestor Gahè: dance
Maria Kalesnikava: flute
Natasha López: voice
Alexandra Mahnke: dance
Hugo Rannou: violoncello
Marija Skender: dance
Video documentation: Nikola Kaloyanov
Video edition: Remmy Canedo
Text excerpts from: Michel Foucault, “Macht und Freiheit”; Michel Foucault, “Care of the Self” and “The will to freedom”, of “Critique and Ethics”.

A production of: InterAKT Initiative e. V.
Funded by: Stadt Stuttgart, LBBW-Stiftung and S-K-A-M e. V.
With the kind support of: Musik der Jahrhunderte e. V., GEDOK Stuttgart and DUNDU.

TRIO vis-à-vis:
Hugo Rannou, violoncello
Natasha López, soprano
Sound and video recording and editing: Madeline Reinaldo Mendoza
Recording studio: Hochschule der Medien (Stuttgart)
22.02.2020

“Querida presencia”, is based on an inspiration, poetic and vaguely nostalgic, aimed at revolutionary utopias. The Spaniards embraced the south americans of the twentieth century and catalyze themselves around the image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
In “Querida presencia” his figure appears in an intimate dimension through the alienated metrics of a metaphysical tango. Voice and instrument are at first distant (the cello sings the rhythmic bass alone for 18 bars) and then ever closer, tight, intertwined until the vortex of a tightrope walk canon that marks the inebriated culmination of the dance, when the image of the pair of tango dancers shows up before slipping into the languid finale.

TRIO vis-à-vis:
Hugo Rannou, violoncello
Natasha López, soprano
Sound and video recording and editing: Madeline Reinaldo Mendoza
Recording studio: Hochschule der Medien (Stuttgart)
22.02.2020

“Allons” was written on the occasion of a concert at the “Teatro de la Scala”, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Italy. Many composers were invited to provide an original contribution and Ivan Fedele, rather than resorting to specific texts or themes, chose to symbolize his intentions with the verb that opens “La Marseillaise”, a universal hymn to freedom. The piece, however, should not be understood as a collective hymn since it refers on the contrary to an individual journey of discovery and self-recognition.

This new work for TRIO vis-a-vis deals with the translation of acoustic instrument interpretation techniques into electro-acoustic hybrid instruments that Silvia Rosani designed and developed for the members of the ensemble and for herself. Common objects, little different from hard and rough material, become instruments through electromagnetic induction. Everyday gestures such as raising an arm or an object help to create or process a sound, suggesting that experimenting with sound is an activity accessible to everyone, including non-musicians.
The work is associated with “Lamento della Ninfa SV163”, by Claudio Monteverdi, resynthesized by the instruments of the trio (cello, vocals and flute) and hybrid instruments. The spectrum of the recording of this piece is analyzed and the frequencies resulting from the analysis are instrumentally and vocally “re-synthesized” so that sometimes parts of the original piece are heard and sometimes the new piece, which is microtonal, is heard. So past and present will live together and share a different kind of memory: both musically and instrumentally.

Ai limiti delle soglie II: con moto trasversale, for soprano, violoncello, flute, composer and hybrid electroacoustic instruments (feedback on metal panels and bass flute, motors). WORLD PREMIERE. Commissioned from TRIO vis-à-vis
Laudation for the concession of the human rights award to Maria Kalesnikava by the “Gerhart and Renate Baum Foundation”
Performed at ECLAT Festival
7.02.2021, THEATERHAUS, Stuttgart
“We dedicated this concert to our flutist and friend Maria Kalesnikava and through art we support her release as well as the implementation of democracy for Belarusian people” TRIO vis-à-vis

A production of: ECLAT Festival, Musik der Jahrhunderte e. V.
Financed by: “Gerhart und Renate Baum Stiftung” and Stiftung “Landesbank Baden-Württemberg”

“Made in China/Epitaph” departs from the poem «I fall asleep, just standing like that» by of Chinese worker poet Xu Lizhi, who commited suicide at the age of 24 while working under quasi slave conditions at Foxconn Factory. Foxconn is the main provider of the main technological companies along the world, like Apple, Amazon, Dell, Google, Sony… The case of Xu Lizhi is not an isolated one: violations of human rights are a constant in their factories (hipersurveillance of workers, turns longer than 10 hours a day, employment of minors…), where the production rhythms are determined by the market releases of new products. In the other side, the after use of these gadgets after their slavistic production (mainly smartphones) is rather like a game, from the design of their interfaces to the relation we stablish with the world through the connectivity of apps, social networks or audiovisual content plaftorms. In the piece, these this brutal and opaque contrast between the production conditions and their anaesthetic entertainment is thematized in the way the live instruments interact with the text of the poem and the audiovisual content (mainly videos gathered as a search result of the poem words in platforms like youtube or tiktok).

Made in China/Epitaph, for soprano, violoncello, flute and audiovisual projection (upon a text by Foxconn employee Xu Lizhi). WORLD PREMIERE. Commissioned from TRIO vis-à-vis

Performed at “Der Sommer in Stuttgart” Festival
23.07.2021, THEATERHAUS, Stuttgart
A production of: Musik der Jahrhunderte e. V.
Financed by: Musikfonds e. V. and Musik der Jahrhunderte e. V.

“(neo)liberal systems” is a new series of pieces around the paradox of exercising an almost endless freedom within a context that tolerates it, but at the same time it assimilates it in different systems that manage and reduce it to an unitary function and signification.
In all the pieces there is a radical differentiation between the materiality produced by the musicians and the ruling system. There no conventional score showing to the musicians what they should play, but instead, they have the liberty to decide (previously or not, negotiated or not) their own material, instruments and way of playing.
With the subtitle of “crescendo”, this second piece responds to a very simple tendency; everything played by the musicians is continuously recorded and playback, so that a big mass of more and more layers a sound is gradually created: an infinite process of growing and accumulation of materiales whose only objective is continue growing and accumulating.
In a sense, “(neo)liberal systems” are pieces which take place simultaneously in the genres of free improvisation and written fixed music, not especially as a hybrid between them, but more as a movement that oscillates between freedom and absolute determination.

(neo)liberal systems #2 «crescendo» (2019), for any kind and number of instruments + live electronics

Performed at “Der Sommer in Stuttgart” Festival
23.07.2021, THEATERHAUS, Stuttgart
A production of: Musik der Jahrhunderte e. V.
Financed by: Musikfonds e. V. and Musik der Jahrhunderte e. V.

“Impossible translations” is a series of works for acoustic instruments an simultaneous video, in which I try to establish a relationship between music and the outside world by means of a rather arbitrary translation of a non musical input (usually videos or still images) into a playable instrumental score.
Rather than works about synesthesia, they are works that try to force a relationship in order to put together two incompatible layers, about the paradox of an impossible music made possible through the materialization of its impossible translation.
This fifth piece of the series is dedicated to Maria Kalesnikava, flutist, political activist in Belarus and since September 2020 political prisoner in Minsk. The material of the video is done from a recording of a protest against the imprisonment of pacific protesters; the original video has already being censored by the belarusian government.
impossible translations #5, for flute + tape and video. WORLD PREMIERE. Commissioned from TRIO vis-à-vis, dedicated to Maria Kalesnikava

Performed at “Der Sommer in Stuttgart” Festival
23.07.2021, THEATERHAUS, Stuttgart
A production of: Musik der Jahrhunderte e. V.
Financed by: Musikfonds e. V. and Musik der Jahrhunderte e. V.