Suite Patagonica

1-Soledad:

Contains an excerpt from “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind” by Osvaldo Golijov –courtesy of Ytalianna Music Publishing.

Narration: “Tricolor de mis amores” written & read by Peter Segundo.

2-Abstracto:

Fernando Cabrera: electric guitar

Marcelo Zuber: transverse flute- quena flutes

3-Agua:

Santiago Vázquez: percussion
Domingo Sandoval Ralincueo: mapuche tribe children’s song

4-Manquin:

Body Datino: vocals

Ezequiel Borra: vocals

5-La Vía Láctea I:

Contains an excerpt from Contrapunctus 11-Die Kunst der Fuge (J.S. Bach)

 

8-Ambiente:

Fernando Zuber – Carlos Martínez Casas: percussion on ice

Chango Spasiuk: accordion

Fernando Cabrera: vocals

Ursula Calderón: vocals

9-La Via Lactea II:

Contains an excerpt from Contrapunctus 11-Die Kunst der Fuge (J.S. Bach)

10-Jorge:

Jorge Stylarek: vocals

Fernando Cabrera: electric guitar

Santiago Vázquez: percussion

Marcelo Zuber: transverse flute

11-Viento:

Contains an excerpt from “Cantor del Sur” by Atahualpa Yupanqui

Héctor Chavero: Spanish guitar

12-Segundo:

Santiago Vázquez: percussion

Federico Escofet: loops

Lola Kiepja: vocals

Picky Talarico: keyboards

13-La Vía Láctea III:

Contains an excerpt from Contrapunctus 10 – Die Kunst der Fuge (J.S. Bach)

Peter Segundo: vocals/narration

Chango Spasiuk: accordion

 

14-Rítmico:

Marcelo Zuber: transverse flute – quena flutes

Chango Spasiuk: accordion

Lola Kiepja: vocals

 

Sebastián Escofet: electric piano, programming, textures, filters, samples, loops, percussion on ice, 6 & 12 string acoustic guitars, Spanish guitars, keyboards, vocals, field recordings

 

Composed, arranged, produced, edited & recorded by Sebastián Escofet between July 2001 & August 2005.

 

Percussion recorded by Santiago Vázquez, vocals recorded by Fernando Zuber & Carlos Martínez Casas. The recordings of Lola Kiepja were made by Anne Chapman in 1966 (thank you), the recording of the mapuche children’s song was made by Manuel Gedda in September of 1981 (thank you).

 

Mixed by: Sebastián Escofet (1-2-6-7-8-9-11-13-14), Hernán Agrasar and Sebastián Escofet (3-4-5-10-12)

Mastered by Eduardo Bergallo

Art direction: Juanito Jaureguiberry

Photography : Juan Vaz Duarte

 

Thanks to: everyone who contributed to creation of this piece of work, to my family here & there, Carolina Spinelli, Flora Fernández, Chris Clark, Paul Clark, Talvin Singh, Luciano Podcaminsky, Fernando García, Marcelo Montolivo, the Zuber family, the Martínez Casas family, Marta Del Pino, Felipe Guerrero, Agustín-Claudia-Las Moras, Madalenu, Ali, the Asterisco community, Francis Dapim, Banduman, Eduardo Torres, Gustavo Coppoletta, Nicolas Martin, Victor Nubla, Eduard Escoffet, Isidret y Rosita Escofet, Don Alfredo Manquin, Favio Shifres, Polaco, Nico y Jose, Lic Ratto, Julia Solomonoff, Colors Magazine, Fabrica, San Pablo Estate, Maria Bety Estate, Ursula y Cristina Calderon, J.S.Bach, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Osvaldo Golijov, Dmitry Shostakovich, Moondog, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Martha Argerich, Leda Valladares, Glenn Gould, Kronos Quartet.

 

 

Dedicated to Fernando Zuber & Carlos Martínez Casas, for a dream that changed our lives.

For Juanito, my eternal & generous friend.

Copyright- Asterisco Records 2005

Suite Patagónica:

 

One afternoon nearly five years ago, I was at home when the phone rang. It was Fernando Zuber calling from Italy, telling me he’d met a young Catalan man who had talent & a special sensitivity. Carlos Martínez Casas. He said that one day in conversation, a shared fascination with Patagonia & Tierra del Fuego had arisen. They were conceiving a project in which they imagined me participating. An audiovisual journey throughout the south of Argentina. An encounter with the traditions & scenery of the end of the world.

 

We traveled for the first time in July of 2001. I began to listen to nature, to record its sounds & to perceive how to represent that space in which eternal powers are manifest.

 

What kind of music could move us to feel those surroundings, that loneliness, that depth, that purity? The wind was present at all times. Its sounds, the sounds it generated as it hit objects & rooftops. Everything has its sound.

 

I discovered how ice crackles when the sun’s shining upon it, how you can hear the murmuring of waters beneath frozen rivers. The sound of walking on snow, the friction of our clothes, birds singing, motors rumbling in the distance, the ocean heard from a cliff, an axe hitting a tree trunk, a casual tale, a radio, ice blocks resounding like drums, snow falling upon a tin roof, the drip of melting icicles.

 

I had never composed using nature as my main source of sound.

 

Normally, people are taught to compose music with instruments & sometimes they incorporate textures as an extra ingredient.

 

I slowly & microscopically searched the recorded material for sound cells, separating them, regrouping them according to different functions & trying to make those groups work among each other, emulating organs in the human body.

 

The result was an organic vision of the music. Layers of sound interacting with one another. These first textures worked like the canvases JMW Turner, “The painter of light”, used for his glorious paintings. The initial ambiance contained the framework for what would be the finished product. The textures already contained sounds that manifested colors, suggested tones and harmonic instruments. The stories conveyed structures & emotional states.

 

Working with layers of sound, I generated fadings. The result of adding even more elements was a very rich & complex landscape of sound. As such, this piece of work can be read in many ways.

 

Rembrandt’s paintings were another big influence. His genius way of knowing in advance what the general form of the painting would be & then adding layers of strokes & colors to achieve the final product like a sum of all the parts.

 

As the years went by the layers began to settle, instruments began to appear, shapes & forms became clearer, spaces more visible. Everything fell into place.

 

I started inviting friends to contribute with their sounds, straight from their intuition & with no prior rehearsal. I tried to make the music speak for itself, be direct, raw, pure, spontaneous.

 

Between each musical piece, instead of the usual seconds of silence, there is something more realistic: textures in transition. In life we’re constantly surrounded by sounds. Those sounds are the music of our days. Everything is music. The music of things, the sound of the instant in which we’re living. Silence does not exist.

 

Because of its form, Suite Patagonica allows one to understand each piece with help from the others as well as the final homogeneous result as a whole, an entity, a being, an ethereal form made of cosmic dust.

 

Suite Patagonica is the finalization of a project started by Fernando Zuber and Carlos Martínez Casas. It first appeared in an issue of Colors magazine, then in a documentary -“Solitude at the end of the World”- & finally on this record.

 

To my brothers & friends who accompanied & supported me all this time, thank you very much.

 

Sebastian Escofet, August 19th 2005, Buenos Aires