Commission to Alex Paxton

Alex Paxton’s new symphonic work for Neue Vocalsolisten and Klangforum Wien is an expression of his ‘longing to live in a world of infinite sonic possibilities’. With the two highly virtuoso ensembles, Paxton wants to break new compositional ground and develop music ‘that reaches into the highest spheres of fantasy like sonic science fiction’.

In February 2023, the previously little-known young composer Alex Paxton impressed the Stuttgart ECLAT audience with his idiosyncratic, enigmatically associative musical language. Curious to see where this rich music, charged with exuberant impressions, would develop in the future, Alex was invited to develop a new work for one of the future ECLAT festivals. The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation has made this commission possible.

‘I have a lot of experience writing new music for large instrumental ensembles. In this work, I would like to be inspired by the specific character of Klangforum Wien, which differs from the other ensemble not least in terms of instrumentation (e.g. accordion). Writing for Neue Vocalsolisten is uncharted territory for me in many ways. But I would like to further develop various aspects of vocal music that I have composed in the past in this new piece: the expressive modernist musical language of my early operas, the music for children, which is sometimes very authentic to my artificial language, and the work with choir sample packs as developed for the film/video game industry (although I use them very differently), and with self-made sample packs/instruments that play an increasingly absurd role in my music, growing voices into film choruses or creating hypervirtuoso cyborg sounds and robot children’s singing.

I want to explore these various currents of musical-vocal expression with the virtuosos of the Neue Vocalsolisten: with an ensemble that can push the limits of human vocal ability and imagination, from cyborg-like sounds in the first part for voices and electronics to human-bodily sounds that flow into the sound palette of an orchestra in the tutti part. The music that emerges reaches into the highest realms of the imagination like a sonic science fiction, while also reflecting the rich musical traditions as we know them in our contemporary society (from film music, concert music, video games and other listening traditions). My desire to live in a world of infinite sonic possibilities can be fulfilled thanks to these two ensembles in the tutti part of the composition, where as much as possible of what I hear inside me can actually be realised,’ says Alex Paxton about his work.

Further information:
mdjstuttgart.de

Dates

February 8, 2025
Theaterhaus Stuttgart

February 28, 2025
Konzerthaus Vienna