updated 13 December 2021
© Daniel Zea

Fernando Garnero

Argentine composer born 23 November 1976 in Rosario, Argentina.

Fernando Garnero studied piano, music theory, and composition in Buenos Aires before moving in 1998 to Switzerland. There he took lessons in harpsichord, basso continuo, composition, and Renaissance and Baroque music theory at the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève in Éric Gaudibert’s studio. With Xavier Dayer, Garnero explored orchestration, and with Philippe Alberà, twentieth-century musical aesthetics. In Basel from 1999 to 2001, he studied computer-assisted composition with Thomas Kessler and Hanspeter Kyburz, and in Strasbourg from 2004 until 2007 in Ivan Fedele’s studio. In 2008, he joined IRCAM’s Cursus program for composition and computer music. Among the founding encounters of his formative years were Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, Georges Aperghis, Gérard Pesson, and Stefano Gervasoni.

At Lund University in Sweden, Garnero wrote his thesis on inductors and augmented instruments. He also deepened his consideration of the process surrounding his compositions. Since 2011, his musical practice has been characterized by hybridization through the systematic use of complex sound objects. The cycle Avoidances, composed of the pieces Ballad (2012), BOP (2014), and Ragtime (2015), takes samples from the work of George Gershwin, Thelonius Monk, and Scott Joplin, providing a rich web of references, quotations, and deconstructed quotations — a result of his aim to make music from music. In Ragtime, Garnero identifies a turning point in his compositional practice. From this moment, he drew as much on sound objects as on multiplying configurations, redefining “‘composable space’ as a playing field of objects’ interactions and operations built on overlaid maps in a multi-locational approach.” Today, Garnero focuses his compositions on complex sound organisms, or meta-timbres, non-rhetoric development typologies, the destructive function of repetition, and creating an aesthetic status for the impasse.

His works have been played by ensembles and soloists such as Vortex, Accroche Note, Contrechamps, Cairn, Sillages, les Solistes de Lyon, Donatienne Michel-Dansac, and Françoise Rivalland, and at festivals including Musica, Archipel, MIA, Voix nouvelles, Voix de Prieuré, Gaudeamus, and Centre Acanthes. He has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, Radio France, the Venice Biennale, the Royaumont Foundation, the Archipel Festival, Pro-Helvetia, and the Nicati Foundation, and he has received grants from the State of Geneva and the Simón I. Patiño Foundation.

He founded and later became artistic co-director of the Vortex Ensemble, based in Geneva, which brings together instrumentalists and composers who have contributed to contemporary artistic production. He was an associate artist at Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (BIFEM) until 2023. From 2020 until 2021, he was resident at Villa Medici in Rome, where he led the project Musique au-delà du Son (Music Beyond Sound), which furthered his exploration of assembling and manipulating complex sound objects and recontextualizing them constantly in a series of audiovisual, mixed, and performative works.


© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2021

Sources

BabelScores, Villa Médicis, Université de Lund, France Musique

  • Solo (excluding voice)
    • Continuity Girl for oboe (2008), BabelScores
    • elec ircam Ircam cursus A . A . GIRL for violin and electronics (2009)
    • Interlude for electric guitar (2014), BabelScores
    • elec Mutante/Amniótica for resonant double bass on stage with transducers and electronics (2018), BabelScores
  • Chamber music
    • Cinq portails pour le vent du sud for bass clarinet in B flat, violin and double bass (2007), BabelScores
    • elec Ballad Avoidances I, for alto flute, alto saxophone, percussion, piano and electronics (2012), BabelScores
    • Limae Labor for electric guitar, violin, viola and cello (2013), BabelScores
    • elec Fabula I for amplified bass clarinet, amplified double bass and electronics (2015), BabelScores
    • elec N.T.P.M. (Our land, drifting dead fish), for two percussionists, accordion and electronics (2015), BabelScores
    • elec Ragtime Avoidances III, for amplified bass flute, amplified baritone saxophone, amplified piano and electronics (2015), BabelScores
    • elec Tête/Carroussel staged chamber music for amplified/extended saxophone and percussion, electronics and video (2017), BabelScores
    • Trans-étude #1 for bass flute, baritone saxophone and toy-piano (2019)
    • elec Trans-étude #2 for flute, viola and harp with motors (2020)
  • Instrumental ensemble music
    • Odradek for ensemble (2010), BabelScores
    • Deshilacha Maneras for symphony orchestra (2013), BabelScores
    • elec Ojo de buey for two instrumental ensembles (2013), BabelScores
    • elec BOP Avoidances II, for eight musicians and electronics (2014), BabelScores
    • Granite Lip for eight instrumentalists (2014), BabelScores
    • elec Fabulae scenes from Grimm's tales, for amplified ensemble, electronics and video (2015-2016), BabelScores
    • elec Junkspace for amplified ensemble, electromechanical artefacts, feedback systems, inductors and objects (2017), BabelScores
    • elec Neon pig for twelve instruments, inductors, low-fi electronics (2017), BabelScores
    • elec Dynamogramme: Allegretto for amplified ensemble, electronics and multichannel device (2018-2019), BabelScores
  • Vocal music and instrument(s)
    • As far... for three female voices and harp (2008), BabelScores
  • A cappella vocal music
    • A Far-b for six female voices (2009), BabelScores
  • Electronic music / fixed media / mechanical musical instruments
    • elec V15 17-channel installation for 1600 piezos and two subwoofers (2019-2020)
  • 2020
    • elec Trans-étude #2 for flute, viola and harp with motors
    • elec V15 17-channel installation for 1600 piezos and two subwoofers
  • 2019
  • 2018
    • elec Mutante/Amniótica for resonant double bass on stage with transducers and electronics, BabelScores
  • 2017
    • elec Junkspace for amplified ensemble, electromechanical artefacts, feedback systems, inductors and objects, BabelScores
    • elec Neon pig for twelve instruments, inductors, low-fi electronics, BabelScores
    • elec Tête/Carroussel staged chamber music for amplified/extended saxophone and percussion, electronics and video, BabelScores
  • 2016
    • elec Fabulae scenes from Grimm's tales, for amplified ensemble, electronics and video, BabelScores
  • 2015
    • elec Fabula I for amplified bass clarinet, amplified double bass and electronics, BabelScores
    • elec N.T.P.M. (Our land, drifting dead fish), for two percussionists, accordion and electronics, BabelScores
    • elec Ragtime Avoidances III, for amplified bass flute, amplified baritone saxophone, amplified piano and electronics, BabelScores
  • 2014
    • elec BOP Avoidances II, for eight musicians and electronics, BabelScores
    • Granite Lip for eight instrumentalists, BabelScores
    • Interlude for electric guitar, BabelScores
  • 2013
  • 2012
    • elec Ballad Avoidances I, for alto flute, alto saxophone, percussion, piano and electronics, BabelScores
  • 2010
    • Odradek for ensemble, BabelScores
  • 2009
    • elec ircam Ircam cursus A . A . GIRL for violin and electronics
    • A Far-b for six female voices, BabelScores
  • 2008
  • 2007

Liens Internet

(liens vérifiés en décembre 2021).

Discographie

  • Fernando GARNERO, Granite Lip, dans « Ensemble Reconsil: Exploring the World », 14 CD Orlando Records, 2016, OR0014.
  • Fernando GARNERO, Ojo de buey ; Cinq portails pour le vent du sud, dans « Garnero / Tara / Chessex », 1 CD United Phoenix Records, 2015.
  • Fernando GARNERO, Luminar, dans « Ensemble Vortex », 1 CD Neos, 2011, NEOS 11113.