LALA DISANDRO
Composer
BIO
Photo by Matias Vercelli
María Laura Disandro is an Argentinian composer. She studied Musical Composition at the National University of Córdoba, in Argentina; the Master´s Degree in Musical Heritage imparted by the University of Granada, University of Oviedo and International University of Andalucía, in Granada, Spain; and the Master in Music (Composition) in the University of Missouri, in Columbia, U.S.A.
She has participated in numerous courses, seminars, forums, festivals and workshops taking master classes with internationally renowned composers, such as Martín Matalón, Yann Robin, Valerio Sannicandro, Jaime Reis, Hilda Paredes, Mark Andre, Michael Maierhof, Mathias Spahlinger, Juan Carlos Tolosa and Gabriel Valverde. She has worked with diverse ensembles such as Neo Ensemble, Trama Ensemble, Nonsense EVS and Suono Mobile from Argentina; Taller Sonoro Ensemble and Barcelona Modern Ensemble from Spain; Collective Love Music Ensemble from France; Kommas Ensemble from Germany, LF3 from México, and New Music Ensemble, Mizzou Percussion Ensemble, and the String Quartet of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from the U.S.A. Her works has been performed in several countries such as Argentina, México, United States, Portugal, Spain, France, and Germany.
“My compositional style is based on creating imaginary worlds with an ambiguity between what is real and what is not. Different stories work as a trigger for my compositions in which some autobiographical events of my life are merged with fictional situations. My goal is that the music I compose in each of my compositions works as the perfect soundtrack of these imaginary worlds. My purpose is to create music that expresses a kind of ‘magic realism’ or ‘science fiction music’ where the daily turns into strange”.
SELECTED WORKS
HOUSES SET
LIVING IN A BOX (2023)
Composer Notes:
If you live in a box and you take a bath, when you drop your head into the water, you can hear your neighbors. Their stunning noises, their horrible music, their clumsy steps, the stupid things they are doing. They talk in any language but yours. They scream, they laugh, they fuck, they argue, they break things, they cry, they get older. You hate them because they are living with you in that bath. Sometimes, if you live in a box and you take a bath, when you drop your head into the water you can also hear your breath, your heart, your blood, your bowels.
If you lived into the sea and you dropped your head into the water you would hear silence and the noise of the chains of some distant ship. You can’t hear yourself, your breath, your heart, your blood, your bowels. You would feel fresh water with no waste of your body floating around. And, of course, you wouldn ́t hear the stupid things that your neighbors do. Those things that you hate so much because you know are the same stupid things you always do.
Living in a Box (2023) for flute, clarinet, saxophone, violin, cello, and piano was premiere by the Barcelona Modern Ensemble in the Sala Cambra of the Conservatori Superior Liceu at the Festival de Música Contemporània i Nova Creació on June 22nd of 2023 in Barcelona, Spain.
This work was composed in the framework of the International Course of Composition Barcelona Modern 9º edition and is especially composed for the Barcelona Modern Ensemble.
Living in a Box is the third and last part of what I denominated "Set of Houses" and it is inspired in the apartment I lived in the United States: 1133 Ashland Road, apartment 911, MO.
LIT LITTLE CRYSTAL HOUSES
(2022)
Composer Notes:
Lit Little Crystal Houses se refiere a la fragilidad de una casa a punto de colapsar luego del incendio: el sonido de cristales crujientes, de la madera todavía enfriándose. Vives en un lugar extremadamente frágil que nunca sabes cuando desaparecerá en millones de partículas de vidrio. De día es sofocante por el calor y la excesiva luz. De noche, helada volviéndose de transparente a opaca por tu propia respiración. Pero en realidad esta casa es un invernadero. Su interior está lleno de plantas salvajes que se abren lugar por cualquier lado y por sobre cualquier cosa. Sus raíces son imposibles de arrancar, están arraigadas tan profundamente que te lastimas al intentarlo. Hay tanta vegetación ahí dentro que te deja sin oxígeno. Una naturaleza tan salvaje que te podría devorar, absorber en tan solo un momento.
Mi casa de cristal se encuentra suspendida en el aire, flotando muy cerca del suelo, elevándose milimétricamente cada día.
Lit Little Crystal Houses (2022) for bass clarinet, double bass and piano was especially composed for Low Frequency Trio (LF3) in the frame of the project entitled Nuevas Músicas Latinoamericanas commissioned by Ibermúsicas. It was performed at the festival FIMNME -Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez -and Festival Difracciones in México in 2022. It was also part of the LF3 US Tour being performed at the Americas Society (New York), University of New Mexico (Albuquerque), Boston University (Boston), and Harvard University (Cambridge) in the U.S.A in 2023.
Lit Little Crystal Houses is the second part of what I denominated "Houses Set" and it is inspired in the house I lived in Galicia, Spain: A ponte 2.
BURNING MATCHSTICK HOUSE
(2022)
Composer Notes:
Y quizás inviertas muchísimo tiempo
construyendo tu propia casa.
Y quizás arda en tan solo un momento.
Porque quizás fuiste tú
quien encendió la mecha.
Burning Matchstick House (2022) for string quartet was commissioned by the Sheldon Arts Foundation through the Mizzou New Music Initiative, and was composed for performers of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. It was premiered at The Sheldon, St. Louis on May 2022 by the string quartet of the SLSO.
Burning Matchstick House is the first part of what I denominated "Houses Set" and it is inspired in an apartment I was living for a while but I can not publish the address because it wasn´t my house.
SPORTS SET
TREKKING
(2023)
Composer Notes:
The walking trail "Fuente de la Bicha" in Granada, Spain is a place where people go for doing sports: walking, running, riding bicycles, etc. People in groups or alone, with their families and friends, young people, old people with walking sticks, children with their pets use to go on Sundays to take some fresh air and renew for the new week that is coming.
I used to go there, sit in a bench to take some fresh air, renew the oxygen of my disturbed brain and one day I decided to make a recording of that sonorous landscape as a souvenir.
"Trekking" intends to transform that moment of my past that was captured in that recording into something impossible to exist.
Other soundscapes recordings made in the countryside of Galicia, Spain and a percussion quartet contributed to create this imaginary world and telling the story.
Trekking (2023) for percussion quartet and electronics was commissioned by the Sinquefield Commissions through the Mizzou New Music Initiative. It was premiered at the Sheryl Crow Hall at the University of Missouri, Columbia, U.S.A. on March 12th 2023 by the Mizzou Percussion Ensemble.
Trekking is the second part of what I denominated "Sports Set".
NATATORIO
(2019)
Composer Notes:
The work´s idea arises from the recording I made in Córdoba, Argentina in 2018 of one of my swimming classes: sound of water, people swimming butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke or freestyle, noise of pipes, rails, voices, sneezes, and coughs. With that material plus other sounds I built the electronic part that aims at demonstrating a recognizable sonority of reality while expanding it into a wider imaginary world.
Natatorio (2019) for violin, cello and electronics was premiered on November 18th of 2019 at the 17º Festival de Música Española de Cádiz in Cádiz, Spain. Natatorio was also performed by Kommas Ensemble in Cologne, Germany in 2021.
This work is the first part of what I denominated "Sports Set".