Exposure 4.1

(
2010
)
Composer: Pedro Rebelo
for saxophone quartet and live electronics

The piece explores the space between determinacy and indeterminacy in regards to the use of musical materials between the four instruments. This results in an ambiguous musical environment in which precision in the articulation of pitch and timbre is conflated with derivative events arising from a disjunction in playing techniques.

The quartet is treated both as a whole and as a discontinuous aggregate of four instruments which themselves become dissected by playing techniques which require the performer to revisit the habitual body-instrument relationship.

The use of live-electronics focuses on diffusing the instrumental material across a plane on which multiple instances of the music can occur simultaneously. As the piece is slightly different in every performance, the electronics render some sense of the field of possibilities that is encoded in the score itself while maintaining a sense of intimate chamber music like relationship with the instrumental part.

The piece was commissioned by the Quasar Saxophone Quartet.

Exposure 4.1 was premiered on March 31 2010 in Montreal as part of Les Mutations dynamiques concert.