«New music is alive in Portugal, and hearing it is “a way to change the world”»
I made it on the papers, this time for a respectable enough reason: Público, Portugal’s main periodical, featured the national candidates for the ISCM “Young Composers Award”. A newspaper’s duty is first and foremost to inform, and thus I was in fact informed that this was a thing only when they reached out for a statement. In any case, it is an entirely processual affair, with anybody participant under 35 automatically nominated.
The roundup, which featured me and fellow travellers Mariana Vieira, João Caldas, Pedro Lima, Carlos Brito Dias and Eva Aguilar, started by asking “why compose?”. Why compose — why compose today, now, still. The critic and the editor sagely did away with the bulk of my rambling, and offered readers instead the following gem of a summary: it’s “a way of using [navigating, creating] life”. I’ll take that expression with me for future inquiries, please and thank you.
In the meantime, rehearsals with the wonderful Concrète [LAB] are underway, and rehearsals with Ensemble MPMP are just starting. I’ll be immersed in one of the busiest work stretches of the year, and, frankly, largely unable to attend most of the festival as a listener, so do me a favor: take part in the festivities for me, will you?