Illegal Cycles (sinfonietta version)

Sinfonietta. (2015)

I have slowly developed a sort of obsession when it comes to incorporating materials from popular music and folk traditions into my music, and this piece is another attempt in that direction. The beginning of the piece inquires the fantasy of listening on one side of my headphones a freely improvised piece (Globokar comes to mind), and on the other one, any of my favorite salsa bands. This duality of worlds has become a recurrent topic in my music that has led me to different avenues and results. An aspect I enjoy in this piece is that at certain moments, I created a mass of grooving sound. This mass has multiple independent grooving lines playing repeating patterns, that discern in tempo, key, and mood. The goal is that it would become a “groovy–noise” or a “noisy–groove.”

This is a live version of the piece performed by the UT New Music Ensemble, that’s me on the percussion.

I had the chance to work this piece with the incredible ensemble Wild Up based in LA as part of the the program “National Composers Intensive”. Click here to know more about it. (Check my bio on LA Phil’s website here).