Composer Zosha Di Castri Releases Debut Album TACHITIPO On New Focus Recordings

Composer Zosha Di Castri releases her debut portrait album, Tachitipo, on Friday, November 15, 2019 on New Focus Recordings. The album is a stellar collection of Di Castri's eclectic chamber and solo works, both acoustic and electro-acoustic, performed by the JACK Quartet, pianist Julia Den Boer, Yarn/Wire, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, and the vocal ensemble Ekmeles. A special bonus video track, how many bodies have we to pass through, performed by percussionist Diego Espinosa Cruz Gonzalez, is forthcoming.

Tachitipo also features women in roles where they have traditionally been underrepresented: Di Castri as composer, critically acclaimed classical recording engineer Martha de Francisco as producer, internationally recognized new music champion Lorraine Vaillancourt as conductor, as well as several other young female audio engineers that worked on the recording and mixing of the album. Di Castri hosts an album release party at Tenri Cultural Institute on Sunday, November 17 at 6pm.

The opening track on the recording, The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named (2013), was written for the vocal ensemble Ekmeles and explores aging, both as a function of the voice and also as a universal phenomenon. Using a wide range of vocal techniques that focus on timbre and theatrical elements, Di Castri creates textures that are in constant flux. Di Castri says, "Here, the grain of the voice, loaded with its humanness and animal ancestry, wavers between a tone of beseeching invocation or self-doubt, and a defiant proclamation of self-assurance. I wondered whether the crux between what we declare with confidence outwardly, and what we supplicate for inwardly, might reveal something about what it means to come into oneself, to grow old."

Of her haunting Cortège (2010), an ensemble work written for 13 players, performed here by the Talea Ensemble led by Lorraine Vaillancourt, Di Castri writes, "Cortège was inspired by the idea of a strange procession (inspired by Cavafy), a relentless succession of people and sounds. Composed in a block-like manner, contrasting textures are juxtaposed in a rich sonic patchwork. Akin to the perspective of someone observing a parade from a window above, there is a melancholy awareness of the fleeting nature of the passing revelry. It is the music of impending loss, the night before the city falls into enemy hands, or the evening before a lover leaves for good."

Of all the works on this recording, Quartet No. 1 (2016) is the least programmatic, in the sense that it is not a manifestation of an extra-musical concept realized in sound. Grounded in a compositional process that involved experimenting with sound files in an audio editing software, Di Castri has created a tactile, highly detailed library of string quartet sounds that are fresh and unique to this piece. The work, performed here by the JACK Quartet, toggles between these meticulous textures and moments of ethereal suspension. Di Castri says, "Though some composers fear the medium of the string quartet due to its historical weight or supposed timbral homogeneity, I see in it both an invitation to build upon a rich legacy, and an opportunity to explore an enormously varied sound palette for contemporary experimentation."

Dux (2017), performed on this album by French-American pianist Julia Den Boer, explores how streams of musical activity can be parsed on the piano. Using falling cyclical canons that grow in complexity, and energetic outbursts from the extremes of the instrument, this piece can be read as an abstract reflection on the political climate in the U.S. the year it was written. In traditional canonic writing, the initial melody is called the leader (dux), while the voice that imitates is known as the follower (comes). In exploring these themes of leader (often bombastic, unpredictable, powerful, scattered), and follower, this piece thrives on polarizing juxtapositions. It demands that the pianist master a virtuosic, fast, and physical choreography of gestures to convey the drama of the music.

La forma dello spazio (2010) for flute, clarinet, piano, violin, and cello, performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble led by Lorraine Vaillancourt, is inspired by the mobile sculptures of Alexander Calder and Lee Bontecou. Di Castri writes, "I wanted to create a composition in which musical gestures appear to be fairly static, yet are permitted a certain flexibility. Alluding to the idea of mobiles, La forma dello spazio has the musicians spatialized around the room." The title is borrowed from a short story by Italo Calvino, and translates appropriately to "The Form of Space."

The title piece, for the two-pianist, two-percussionist quartet Yarn/Wire, is a "reflection on writing and the machines we use to execute our ideas." Di Castri turns to the vintage manual typewriter as her inspiration for building a vocabulary of sounds. The title, Tachitipo (2016), comes from an 1823 typewriter model, also known as the tachigrafo, invented by the Italian Pietro Conti di Cilavegna. The work alternates between quasi-improvisatory textures featuring microtonal washes of pitch to tightly controlled, rhythmic ensemble mechanisms. At 24 minutes long, it is a monumental piece spun out of a meditation on work that progresses incrementally, one key stroke at a time.

Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer/pianist living in New York. Her work, which has been performed in Canada, the US, South America, Asia, and Europe, extends beyond purely concert music, including projects with electronics, sound arts, and collaborations with video and dance. She recently completed a commission titled Hunger for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra with improvised drummer, designed to accompany Peter Foldes' 1973 silent film by the same name. Her work Long Is the Journey, Short Is the Memory for orchestra and chorus opened the first night of the 2019 BBC Proms, featuring the BBC Symphony and the BBC Singers, led by conductor Karina Canellakis in Royal Albert Hall. Other large-scale projects include a 25-minute work for soprano, recorded narrator and orchestra entitled Dear Life (based on a short-story by Alice Munro), and an evening-length new music theatre piece, Phonobellow (co-written with David Adamcyk) for International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with performances in New York and Montreal. Phonobellow features five musicians, a large kinetic sound sculpture, electronics, and video in a reflection on the influence of photography and phonography on human perception.

Her orchestral compositions have been commissioned by John Adams, the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, Esprit Orchestra, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and have been featured by Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Sinfonietta, Amazonas Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, among others. Zosha has made appearances with the Chicago Symphony, the L.A. Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in their chamber music series, and has worked with many leading new music groups including Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink, Ekmeles, Yarn/Wire, the NEM, Ensemble Cairn, and JACK Quartet. She was the recipient of the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for her work Cortège in 2012, and participated in Ircam's Manifeste Festival in Paris, writing an interactive electronic work for Thomas Hauert's dance company, ZOO.

Other recent projects include a string quartet for the Banff International String Quartet Competition, a piece for Yarn/Wire for two pianists, two percussionists and electronics premiered at her Miller Theatre portrait concert, a solo piano work for Julia Den Boer commissioned by the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust Fund, a piano/violin duo with Jenny Koh, and a string octet premiered by JACK Quartet and Parker Quartet at the Banff Centre. Upcoming projects include a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress for percussionist Steve Schick and ICE and a commission for the Grossman Ensemble in Chicago, as well as the release of her debut album.

Zosha completed her Bachelors of Music in piano performance and composition at McGill University, and has a Doctorate from Columbia University in composition. She is currently the Francis Goelet Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia, and recently completed a year-long fellowship at the inaugural Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris. Learn more at www.zoshadicastri.com.

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