In his song cycle Noise Uprising, American composer Christopher Trapani looks at the sudden rush of gramophone recordings of non-classical music in the 1920s. Scratchy 78 rpm records of jazz, fado, son, rembetiko, tango and many more genres are the basis of a composition that weaves all these inspirations together into a new cross-cultural network.
The voices of Sophia Burgos and Sofia Jernberg along with Zwerm’s electric guitars bridge the gap between, let’s say, gamelan and salsa, maqâms and ragas, flamenco and tango.
Performers of Noise Uprising
Zwerm
Zwerm is an electric guitar quartet based in Belgium and founded in 2007. Over the years the group has collaborated with various composers, performers and visual artists. Zwerm has never strived for a one-sided artistic profile. During the past ten years the quartet dallied between English renaissance music, contemporary composed music and experimental pop/rock.
Sophia Burgos
Puerto Rican-American soprano Sophia Burgos is fast emerging internationally as a young talent of outstanding intelligence, musicality and stage presence. Burgos is a champion of contemporary music. As such, she is regularly asked to sing world premieres.
Sofia Jernberg
Sofia Jernberg is a singer/voice artist and composer. Her work focuses on unconventional techniques and sounds such as non-verbal vocalisation, split tones, toneless singing and distortion. Music theatre and contemporary opera play an important role in Jernberg’s artistic work, as well as collaborations with visual artists.
Composer
Christopher Trapani
The American-Italian composer Christopher Trapani synthesizes disparate influences, weaving American and European stylistic strands into a personal aesthetic that defies easy classification. Allusions to Delta Blues, Appalachian folk tunes, dance band foxtrots, shoegaze guitar effects, and Turkish makam can be heard alongside spectral swells and meandering canons.
Noise Uprising is co-produced by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, November Music and Wilde Westen as part of the Sounds Now project
Sounds Now is also at Transit with Counterforces with Frederik Croene & Amina Osmanu, Lore Binon, IKRAAAN