Vox Alia II — Cathédrales has been performed in Birmingham, Brussels, Gars am Kamp, Karlsruhe, Kraków, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Malmö, Montpellier, Porto, Rethymno, Santa Barbara, São Paulo, Seattle, St Gallen and Vienna…

To Folkmar Hein

Five short linked sections — Alleluia; Danse sacrée [Sacred Dance]; Requiem; Transe [Trance]; Figures tutélaires [Tutelary Figures] — are unifying (through processing, mixing and spatial settings in relation to the theme) voices from all cultures and civilizations of the world, voices that are above all sacred, with the exception of the last section, which is an augmented variation of Parola volante, the last part of Vox Alia I — Affetti.

In these troubled times of division, fear, mourning and the withdrawal of people and nations, I felt the need to express a desire for unity, sacredness and generosity through the most human of media: the voice.

Alleluia remains fixed on this single word used in Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, and Islamic cultures (the “religions of the Book”).

The sacred dance in Danse sacrée features male choirs simulating the Indonesian monkey dance.

Requiem takes up the codes and slow tempo of certain moments in the Catholic funeral mass.

Transe brews moments of loss of individual identity, of collective sacred intensity in various Sufi, Inuit, African, Indonesian, and Arabic cultures.

The guiding figures in Figures tutélaires are those of Pierre Schaeffer, about the concrete approach, and François Bayle, about octophony.

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Vox Alia II — Cathédrales was realized in 2021 at the Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio of Musiques & Recherches in Ohain (Belgium) and premiered on October 30, 2021 during the concert DEGEM 30 @ ZKM: Verleihung des Thomas-Seelig-Fixed-Media-Musikpreises at the ZKM_Kubus of the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany). The piece was commissioned by the DEGEM through the Thomas-Seelig-Fixed-Media-Preis 2021. Thanks to Folkmar Hein. The work was realized with support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (Service de la musique classique et contemporaine du Service de la Création artistique).