Contemporary music from Catalonia today: a lecture-concert with electroacoustic works, live improvisation and new pieces for voice, saxophone and electronics.
0:30 · Thank Prof. Tomonari Higaki and the Composition & Music Production Lab. Say the goal of the next 20 minutes: who we are, what FLEXUS is, and how to listen to today's concert.
00:00 → 00:30
Today's programme · 15:20–17:00
Three parts, one question: how does sound take shape?
A
Listening
Electroacoustic works · FLEXUS network
Xavier Gelabert Sleepless7:00
Joakim Sandgren ainsi formées8:45
Andrés Lewin-Richter Homenaje a Bruno Maderna6:47
Anna Bofill Vita quotidiana7:53
total ≈ 30 min
B
Playing together
Joint improvisation session
Concert of improvised music: Morphosis DUO together with students, professors and professional musicians of Tokai University.
Joan Martí-Frasquier, saxophones
Joan Bagés i Rubí, live electronics
Tokai musicians: any instrument or voice
you are on stage
C
Lecture-concert
Morphosis Ensemble · FLEXUS 5th edition
Hideki Kozakura ZWEI EULENvoice
Xavier Gelabert VAGINA DENTATAmezzo + elec.
Joan Bagés i Rubí IB: GOTAvoice, elec., video
Anna Tobella, mezzo-soprano · Joan Martí-Frasquier, baritone & alto sax · Xavier Gelabert, electronics & voice · Joan Bagés i Rubí, electronics
The word morphosis comes from Greek morphē, form: the process of taking shape. It is our name, our method and the thread of this afternoon.
1:00 · Keep it light. Say the students will be asked to play in Part B, so they should listen in Part A with that in mind.
00:30 → 01:30
01 · Who we are
A flexible ensemble for mixed music
Morphosis Ensemble is a mixed electroacoustic music ensemble based in Barcelona, directed by pianist, composer and sound artist Joan Bagés i Rubí.
Mixed music: acoustic instruments and voices together with electronics.
No fixed line-up: from a duo to a large ensemble, the group changes shape with each project.
Creation as research: new works, new notation, spectromorphology, sonorous and graphic scores, AI, new ways of staging.
Ten years of activity, celebrated in 2024 with L'Escolta Morfològica.
Morphosis Ensemble in IB: le cornu ancestrale, electroacoustic opera in concert form (2022)
2:00 · Emphasise "variable structure": the ensemble itself behaves like a morphology. Today you see the four-person form of it.
01:30 → 03:30
02 · Key idea for composers
What does the electronics do in mixed music?
Role 1
Generate material
New sounds are born from the instrument: a breath, a key click, a vowel becomes a texture or a cloud.
Role 2
Articulate the form
The electronics marks sections, prepares, extends or answers the performer.
Role 3
Fuse the layers
Acoustic and electronic sounds meet in the room and are heard as one global sound.
2:00 · This is the same thread as the Nagoya lecture: generate, articulate, fuse. Ask students to notice which of the three roles dominates in each piece today.
03:30 → 05:30
03 · A decade of projects
Each project is a new shape
2021Mozart Reloadclassics re-heard through electronics
2022Cage Reloadchance, open forms
2022IB: le cornu ancestraleelectroacoustic opera
2023 →FLEXUS PROJECTinternational network
2024L'Escolta Morfològica10th anniversary
2024Gap the Mind
2026La Tradició en una Pista de Ball
7.2.2027Aventures de Ressonànciawith Arnau Brichs · L'Auditori de Barcelona
Formation
Morphosis Ensemble
The full mixed ensemble.
Formation
Morphosis DUO
Baritone sax + electronics. The original cell.
Formation
Morphosis Clarinet DUO
Clarinets + electronics.
Lab
Morphosis LAB
Research and creation umbrella for FLEXUS.
1:00 · Don't read the timeline. Point to two items only: IB (because you will hear IB: GOTA today) and FLEXUS (next slides).
05:30 → 06:30
04 · Part B starts here
Morphosis DUO
Joan Martí-Frasquier, baritone saxophone · Joan Bagés i Rubí, electronics and visuals.
The first cell of Morphosis Ensemble. Debut in Barcelona at a concert of the Associació Catalana de Compositors, then NYCEMF 2017, New York.
Programs mix written works, text-based scores and free improvisation in the same concert.
Projects: SCRATCH (since 2016), THIS IS NOT A FAD! (works by women composers), SPIDER (installation with gestural scores).
Venues include ESMUC (Barcelona), Contemporaneus Festival (Reus), New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and Tallinn Music Week.
1:30 · Key message: FLEXUS is a network, not a tour. Each composer brings the ensemble to their own city, and each city adds new composers. Tokai is now one of the nodes.
08:00 → 09:30
06 · How FLEXUS works
A cycle that grows with every edition
1
Invite
New composers from different countries join the edition.
2
Create
They write new works for Morphosis Ensemble, often with open or graphic notation.
3
Premiere
The ensemble performs, records and discusses the works.
4
Circulate
Each composer hosts concerts at home: festivals, schools, universities.
5th edition · 2025–2026 · “Morphologies of Sound” · Japan
29 Sep · Nagoya College of Musiclecture + composition masterclass
30 Sep – 1 Oct · Nagoyaopen rehearsal + concert
3 Oct · Tokyo, Ryōgoku MONTEN Hallconcert with JSEM
5 Oct · Tokai University ← todaylecture-concert + improvisation
1:30 · Mention the partners: Japanese Society for Electronic Music, Nagoya College of Music, Tokai University, with the support of the Institut Ramon Llull.
09:30 → 11:00
Part A Listening · four works · ≈ 30 min
Three generations of electroacoustic thinking
1 · Xavier Gelabert — Sleepless
7:00
2 · Joakim Sandgren — ainsi formées
8:45
3 · Andrés Lewin-Richter — Homenaje a Bruno Maderna
6:47
4 · Anna Bofill — Vita quotidiana
7:53
Pioneers
Lewin-Richter (b. 1937) and Bofill (b. 1944): the founders' generation of electronic music in Barcelona, around the Phonos studio.
The IRCAM generation
Sandgren (b. 1965): Stockholm, then IRCAM and Paris 8. Computer-assisted composition.
Today
Gelabert: synthesizers, voice, immersive formats, collaboration with dance.
1:00 · Total listening 30:25. The bars show relative duration. Present the two pioneers together, then Sandgren and Gelabert.
11:00 → 12:00
Part A The pioneers
1937
Andrés Lewin-Richter
Composer · engineer · Barcelona
Fulbright fellow at Columbia University (1962), with Ussachevsky, Davidovsky and Varèse; assistant at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
Founding member of the Phonos studio in Barcelona (1974), the first electronic music studio in Spain still active today.
Taught the history of electroacoustic music at Pompeu Fabra University and ESMUC.
Homenaje a Bruno Maderna6:47
ContextBruno Maderna (1920–1973) co-founded the RAI Studio di Fonologia in Milan (1955) with Luciano Berio, one of the first electronic studios in Europe. A homage from one pioneer to another.
1944
Anna Bofill Levi
Composer · architect · Barcelona
Architect: co-author of Walden 7 (Sant Just Desvern) and the Barri Gaudí in Reus.
Studied electroacoustic music with Gabriel Brncic and computer music with Xavier Serra; in 1985 attended Iannis Xenakis's course at CEMAMU, Paris.
Writes about women in music and in urban design.
Vita quotidiana7:53
Listen forThe link with Xenakis: a composer who thinks in architecture. How are space, proportion and structure built in sound?
1:30 · Point out the architecture–music link (Xenakis was also an architect). Reus is also the city of the Contemporaneus Festival, co-directed by Joan Bagés and Joan Martí-Frasquier.
12:00 → 13:30
Part A Composers of the network
1965
Joakim Sandgren
Composer · Stockholm → Paris
Percussionist first; composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, assistant to Sven-David Sandström, Magnus Lindberg and Pär Lindgren.
IRCAM composition and computer music course (2000); master's at Université Paris 8 (2003). Lives in Paris.
His works are conceived as sound sculptures: the form is found by exploring the energy flows inside the sound material.
ainsi formées8:45 · three musicians and computer
Listen forThe title means “thus formed”. Follow how each gesture carries energy into the next one, and how the form appears from that.
Coordinates the Contemporary Music Season of Manacor (Mallorca).
Le jardin suspendú: a two-hour immersive, minimalist variation for synthesizers on the music of Jehan Alain.
Sal i seda: a work with flamenco dancer Maria Bel Sagrera, between tradition and avant-garde.
Member of Morphosis Ensemble on this tour: electronics and voice.
Sleepless7:00
Listen forHow is time perceived? Note where the music seems to stop moving and where it starts again.
1:30 · Xavier is here: ask him to say one sentence about Sleepless before it is played. Then start Part A.
13:30 → 15:00
Part B Improvisation with Tokai musicians
A shared vocabulary for playing together
No score, but a common language. We listen in sound shapes, not in notes.
Point
short impulse, attack, click
Line
sustained sound, a held tone or noise
Iteration
repeated pulses, trills, grains
Texture
a cloud of many small sounds
Four ways to respond
ImitateContrastTransformWait
Silence is also material. The electronics will capture and transform what you play, so every sound you make can return to you changed.
1:30 · Adapt on the spot to the instruments present. Possible plan: 1) everyone only points, 2) lines enter, 3) free, 4) end together in silence.
15:00 → 16:30
Part C Lecture-concert · Morphosis Ensemble live
Three works, three ways to sing with electronics
Japan · Nagoya
Hideki Kozakura
ZWEI EULENvoice
“Two owls”, in German. Kozakura studied at Tokyo University of the Arts and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, briefly with Tristan Murail. Professor of theory and composition at Nagoya College of Music.
Influences: German classical composers, Kabuki and Kyōgen, and acid techno. Takemitsu Composition Award, shared 2nd prize (1997).
Mallorca · Manacor
Xavier Gelabert
VAGINA DENTATAmezzo-soprano and electronics
The title names an ancient mythical motif that appears in folk tales of many cultures. Here, with Anna Tobella's voice and live electronics by the composer.
Listen forHow the electronics extends the voice: is it a mirror, a shadow or a second character?
Catalonia · Flix
Joan Bagés i Rubí
IB: GOTAvoice, electronics and video
From the IB cycle. Gota means “drop” in Catalan. In IB two characters, H and O, travel through mental landscapes; together they form one element: the drop of water.
“Ib” is a syllable at the root of many Iberian words: the whole, the origin, the drop.
2:00 · Kozakura is the bridge to our Nagoya visit. For IB: GOTA, say H + O = H₂O: water as a metaphor for human existence, a circle with no beginning and no end.
16:30 → 18:30
Morphosis Ensemble in Japan
Baritone & alto sax
Joan Martí-Frasquier
More than 80 premieres for baritone sax. Co-founder of Morphosis DUO and SAX 3+1; has played with Barcelona Modern and Lucilin. Teaches at the Reus Conservatory.
Electronics · artistic director
Joan Bagés i Rubí
Pianist, composer and sound artist. PhD in aesthetics, sciences and technologies of the arts (Paris 8). Co-director of the Contemporaneus Festival, Reus. Teaches at ESMUC.
Mezzo-soprano
Anna Tobella
Trained at the Conservatori del Liceu, Barcelona. Debut at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in 2007; opera, oratorio and new music. Soloist in IB.
Electronics & voice
Xavier Gelabert
Composer from Manacor, Mallorca. Synthesizers, voice and immersive formats; coordinator of Manacor's contemporary music season.
1:00 · Introduce everyone in the room. Then hand over to Part A.
18:30 → 19:30
ありがとうございます · Thank you
Let's listen.
Follow the ensemble and the FLEXUS network, and stay in touch if you want to write for us.
Organised by the Composition & Music Production Lab, Department of Arts, School of Humanities and Culture, Tokai University (programme by Tomonari Higaki). With the support of the Institut Ramon Llull.
