Beatriz Ferreyra

 
Beatriz Ferreyra (born 1937 in Cordoba, Argentina) has been at the forefront of electroacoustic music composition since 1963 when she joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales as one of Pierre Schaeffer's research assistants. She is one of very few composers still performing who was instrumental at the beginning of Schaeffer's theories of sound objects and reduced listening techniques. She continues to compose commissioned works and perform around the world in a career that has spanned some sixty years. 
From the 1960s until 1997 Beatriz Ferreyra composed tape pieces for multi-speaker performance using three or four Revox reel-to-reel tape machines at each concert. She now works on Pro Tools with GRM plug-ins but still uses the Revoxes for certain tape techniques that can't be achieved with computer software. Beatriz Ferreyra discusses her music in the Schaefferian way, as a series of impulsions [sharp attacks], iteratives [repetitions], percutés [percussive hits], and trames [sustains] whilst also using her own onomatopoeic descriptions such as ‘schkllang, prrrrwip, ferrrwisssssh, takatak' communicating sounds freely and directly as she hears them. Her music is about movement; the movement of sounds around a performance space, or the positioning of sounds as point sources within the illusory stereo field between loudspeakers. It is also about movement within individual sounds, where each one is a composition of different shifting components and a ‘little structure' in its own right, with its own character. She likens her sounds to a Russian doll, inside each is another one, which contains another, and so on.
During her time at Schaeffer's studios, Beatriz Ferreyra developed her own research project, Objets Construits, (constructed objects). These are layers of short sounds, chords made of different noises. Each layer is isolated on a separate piece of tape to analyse the relationships between components and the effect of minimal alterations in pitch, dynamics or timing, to the overall perception of the chord. This was a way of thinking about sound slowly and patiently, of taking time to experiment, analyse and contemplate each manipulation, that is lost in the speedy world of vast ready-made digital sound libraries and the immediacy of save and recall buttons.
In Beatriz Ferreyra's work, small, playful sounds interact like chattering creatures and merge into vast cavernous and mysterious immersive landscapes. These three signature pieces use snippets of speech which are gradually deconstructed to create abstract textures, interweaving vocals with percussive and sustained sounds. Small, playful sounds interact like chattering creatures and merge into vast cavernous and mysterious immersive landscapes. La Baballe du Chien Chien [The doggie's little ball] (2001) is a playful take on the way that we speak in a childlike way to pets. A brief narrative at the start invites the listener into this ‘pet speak' scene, with the sound of footsteps and chatter. These gradually crescendo and morph into a cacophonous swirling explosion. Deux Dents Dehors [two teeth sticking out] (2007) is a pun on Bernard Parmegiani's piece Dedans Dehors [Inside Outside] (1977), composed for his birthday. It takes snippets of lively vernacular and processes these into complex patterns of unintelligible and unrecognisable speech, in sustained or percussive sequences and glissandi. Heullas Entreveradas (2018) is a new commission that transforms vocal sounds into choral textures which fragment, granulate and transform into continuous whorls and tidal washes interspersed with her trademark short silences.

(external link : beatrizferreyra.odavia.com)
 
Beatriz Ferreyra - UFO Forest + (vinyl LP)
2024
Room40
forthcoming
"UFO Forest +" is the third and most alchemically satisfying archival anthology of unreleased material from the Argentinian composer, building on a growing recognition of her poetic, psychosonic investigations ongoing since her studies in the early 60's with Nadia Boulanger and Edgardo Canton, and at the renowned Parisian institute INA-GRM.
Beatriz Ferreyra - Senderos de luz y sombras (vinyl LP)
2023
Shelter Press - Records
A 16-channel piece composed between 2016 and 2020, inspired by astrophysics, the mystery of the pre-Big Bang era and some of the uncanny motions of the unconscious mind, where strangeness meets the ordinary, in memoriam Bernard Baschet, Bernard Parmegiani and Carlos Pellegrino.
Beatriz Ferreyra - Souvenirs cachés / Innermost (vinyl LP)
2021
Persistence of Sound
A split LP from two leading voices in electroacoustic music.
Beatriz Ferreyra - Huellas Entreveradas (vinyl LP)
2020
Persistence of Sound
This vinyl record brings together three pieces that play mischievously with the voice as a sound source, narrative source or diverted object: "Huellas Entreveradas" (2018), "La Baballe du Chien Chien à la Mé-Mère" (2001) and "Deux Dents Dehors" (2007).


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