JOKER(S)

Premiered by the PSPBB contemporary ensemble in June 2023.

Conductor: Jean-Christophe Vervoitte. Improvising soloist: Henrique Cantalogo (prepared piano).

JOKER(s) is a piece for 12 instrumentalists and one improvising soloist.

The soloist—who can be any instrument or sound-producing device—is referred to here as the Joker: an unpredictable and ambiguous symbolic figure, inspired by the world of card games and by archetypes found across cultures and histories. The Joker breaks the rules of the game while fully participating in it, refusing to conform to established order.

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Throughout the piece, the Joker has several opportunities to freely interact with the written music performed by the ensemble. The other musicians mostly play fully notated material, but in certain moments, they are given more or less open sections, allowing them to improvise freely or based on specific instructions and pre-written materials.

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JOKER(s) can be seen as a piece that explores musical relationships between composition and improvisation. As such, it also invites reflection on the idea of freedom, evoking—through its poetics—the discomfort of our times: an era shaped by a decaying model, where machines dictate the pace of life and where the unanswered questions of a resigned humanity still echo.

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A piece in four movements:
I – World-Eating Machine
II – The Unanswered Questions (homage to Charles Ives)
III – Dream Seller
IV – Rat Hole (homage to Raul Seixas)