verde3 : music + video aka "the insider"

champi onstage with minimoog, teatro colón bogotá 2003, pic by paloma villamil

thinking of:
string ensembles
jazz composition
experimental song
modern psychology
pili, john, mia!
susana san juan
pedro páramo
love
acausality
joni mitchell: "the hissing of summer lawns"

listening to:
joanna newsom
deerhoof
battles
hot chip
jeff buckley "live at sin-é"


what! a string quartet! i'm supposed to be this rock kid no? "champi the guitar guy." funny because people who met me in my early twenties remember me as the kid with the synthesisers (minimoog included) so they scratch their heads when they come to a new wave gig and we're rocking out with verde3. then some former students of mine will see me in the "latinofutura superbailables" parties with pepe plata djing reggaeton, dub and cumbia villera. or with the same pepe plata at new wave gatherings djing 80s stuff. or with the minimalheadz twisting around the beatz or turntabling.

then you find out that the first version of verde3 was called "verde" and involved a string septet back in 1997... so yeah the string quartet, a return to the roots of my first original composition ensemble format... this time with a laptop (or not) and a will to chant my lungs out on the microphone, if singing from your gut indicates anything...

the string quartet can be seen as an instrument in itself. you have two violins, a viola and a cello. you have four people you develop a working and personal realtionship with. you learn and you learn. you laugh at their jokes. you inmerse in their body language, sound, musicality, all like serum in the vein. a festival of harmonics and a human assemblage. i'm still in awe because this quartet are world-class and said they'd been looking for me to see if i could do some electronics for their pieces, and that they are interested in popular musics too. wow. i sigh because i've missed strings like an old true friend. i can't wait to begin writing and meeting!

some of the dearest moments ever were spent hanging out and working in boston with andrea deboer, flavio gaete, lorenzo peris and kristen odle. the first string quartet "when we were very young..." we did a play in boston 1997/98 with my dear sister pilar you know, an adaptation of "pedro páramo" with live strings and ektachrome subtitles and 16mm black and white projections... so glad i'm in touch with most of the crew, particularly with emilie blezat who is a gorgeous babe and works as producer of films and advanced theatre in paris, maria chenut who is also a gorgeous babe and lives and works in galicia, and mauricio rico (16mm film operator) who actually plays in verde3 today !!!!!! pili was susana and champi was pedro, pili acted and pedro read text. a wonderful achievement. it's decently recorded in audio too!

so from a minimoog to piano to synths and guitars to strings to recording and mixing to djing to running an academic unit to teaching to laptopping, to rocking, and now back to strings. always singing. always onstage. and always recording!


minimoog by heiko mehring, from www.moogworld.com

i see it like this: if music is multiple, if style has been left behind, if the public is diverse in what they listen to, the musician can be that as well: a chameleon in musical style, in instrumental approach, in working format, in the use or setting of the sounds created. music is music. sound is sound. it's all speakers placed or boxes tossed around for people to hear, see, feel, some plugged, some not. quite simple to me.


coincidences between quantum mechanics and the modern school of social psychology are impressive. two coincident ideas struck me particularly: one, how personality and reality in these new models has been admitted to be changing, modifiable, dynamic and alas, something you can create (eg the power of thought, eg the i-ching: "by one's thoughts one commands"). and two, the resulting importance of a proactive role in the individual in terms of the construction of his own (dynamic) personality and actions.

our modern world has become worryingly the opposite of this gorgeous array of revolutionary thought: the mis-use of the world "reality" by reality tv and its imposition of unchangeable "realness," obeying the rules for money. the uniforms of style and thought, all those "who isn't with me is against me," the mention of such thoroughly backward terms such as "the axis of evil" in a world which has already come to the scientific demonstration of the existence of god (quantum mechanics, gilles deleuze). the arts will squirm and the arts will sidestep, the arts will be la piedra en el zapato, continue to generate questions, thought, ideas.

kisshug.

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