Hara Alonso: The naked body, sonorous
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For some sound artists/creators, the pandemic time generated a propitious space for the creative and experimental exercise. Some saw it as a space for musical and personal discernment, and many others, because it was mandatory, as a moment of silence. Of being quiet. Of stopping.
● Read more: Interview with Russian Mezzo Yana Mann
The pandemic generated and continues to generate, even today, immense uncertainty in the world of the arts. In music, the fact that all public events, concerts, symposiums, festivals, etc. were cancelled meant that musicians had to rethink the old familiar paths of communication and professional growth.
All this together seems to be the case of the Stockholm-based Spanish pianist and composer Hara Alonso, who just a year after the world knew about the pandemic, last March released her album Somatic Suspension. A particularly personal album, almost autobiographical, or rather, a musical exploration based on an intimate and rigorous process of self-knowledge and/or self-discovery.
The album is a journey, sensory, somatic as its name suggests, through sound architectures built from small elements that seem to transmute and generate in turn new spaces. New rooms that have not been visited. A post—minimalism present, clean and austere, and full of a deep sound research. The mixing and mastering by Dominic at Declared Sound, in a joint work with the composition, is worth highlighting. The concept and sound design is fundamental in this journey. Its effects and methods are crucial in the narrative.
Tracklist:
1. Desnuda
2. The Centre of the Sun is Empty
3. Reversed Rain
4. 40 Days of Silence
5.Habit or Shock, Resonance or Impact
6. Horizontal Disintegration
7. The Work of Poetry
8. La Memoria del Futuro
According to Alonso, the album emerges after a romantic breakup, the necessary catharsis, perhaps, where Alonso is not afraid to show her vulnerability and share her story. The perfect marriage: heartbreak, frustration or acceptance, and the forced time at home. The result? could not be other than an abyss into which Alonso throws herself, but this time, without fear of emptiness. Perhaps knowing that in that emptiness, she may or may not find the hope she has lost.
The album is released by Irish based, record label, Eotrax Records
IGM decided to talk to Hara, and ask her about Somatic Suspension
Hara Alonso
Photo by Alice Brazzit
Q&A with Hara Alonso
1. Hi Hara, how are you? It's a pleasure to have you here, we appreciate you sharing some thoughts about your music. First, tell us a little bit about yourself and your start in music.
Hello everyone! Thanks for your space, your work is very important for the music scene.
I grew up in a small town in the north of Spain called Astorga where there is a pretty good music school, so my parents, without thinking too much about it, got my brother and me enrolled, he to play violin and I to play piano. I didn't like going to class at all until one day a new teacher appeared and made me discover a way to play the piano through pleasure. He showed me the contemporary repertoire (at the age of 14 I was already playing Lachenmann, beautiful, isn't it?) and jazz piano. I would say that I devote myself to music because I had this great teacher who transmitted his love for music to me.
2. Graduated as a classical pianist in Salamanca, how and when did you start exploring electronic music and why?
I have always been very curious and have had many different interests, so I don't think I ever quite fit the classical music profile. During my piano studies I embarked on the world of contemporary music but I never fully took the step into the creation of music.
I had the immense luck to meet an amazing musician in Helsinki, Sergio Castrillón, who introduced me to the world of improvisation, composition and electroacoustic music. We created an improvisation group with jazz and folk musicians... all remixed. Thanks to that period of experimentation I started to realize that my real interest was in creation and not so much in performance, so little by little I started to dive more and more into the world of electronic music. When I moved to Stockholm I found a vibrant scene that I have learned a lot from and that has totally shaped my music.
3. Do you consider that the environment in which you grew up has or has had some kind of relationship or influence on your music? Or the other way around?
Both my grandmothers were very musical, they both sang, one sang copla and the other folklore. There were always tambourines, dulzainas and vinyl records around the house. My father is a music lover and since I was a child I listened to a lot of jazz and fusion, Keith Jarrett, Weather Report, Astrud Gilberto... but I also remember listening to experimental pop music like Franco Battiato. We listened to Radio 3 a lot, a Spanish alternative music station, and there I discovered, for example, Wim Mertens, who has been a great inspiration. I would say that my environment has influenced my music a lot, on the one hand having access to unconventional music and on the other hand coming from a rural environment I think has also been very decisive. Having grown up in a calm and quiet place I think that somehow has created a special way of listening to music.
Hara Alonso
Photo by Isi de Paula
4. To start talking about your new album, how would you explain the process of creating Somatic Suspension?
This album has been a catharsis on a personal and musical level. On a personal level because I started it after a complicated breakup and somehow composing it was the way to heal that wound. On a musical level it has been the first time that I feel that "I am the music I make". I have tried to compose the music I really want to make, without judgments, without musical style, without fear of not fitting in. Composing from a sincere and humble place.
The album is based on two investigations, a sonorous one and a physical one. The sonorous one with the Yamaha cp-70 piano, which has a very special timbre quality, and the use of electronics.
I was interested in metamorphosing the piano, hacking it, transcending it. The physical because in recent years I have been very involved in somatic practices and dance and somehow I wanted to transfer these experiences to music.
5. How was the process of composition. A long work of exploration and research, or maybe an album fruit of our pandemic times?
I started composing before the pandemic and the truth is that I was already in a bit of a lockdown mode at that time.
For many years I have been researching extended piano techniques and ways to process the piano digitally (I use mostly Supercollider, filtering systems, delay, feedback...), so I wanted to make an album that compiled some of that work.
When the pandemic hit, I was alone in my apartment, where luckily I had my Yamaha cp-70 piano. In Sweden we could go for walks, so I spent those months walking in the woods and playing the piano. There was a special silence that season, a silence like a planetarium. That silence totally influenced the composition, I needed to remove layers, remove and remove until I was left with the essential, and that essential turned out to be very simple melodic lines, minimal electronics and an unreal space-time.
One of the songs on the album is 40 days of silence, which I composed during that period and I think it sums up a bit that feeling of sound loneliness, as Juan Ramón Jiménez would say.
It was a conscious decision to give myself time to compose the album, not to go in a hurry, to let the music mature, to let it rest. It was fundamental because normally my life goes very fast and I'm involved in a lot of projects, so suddenly, stopping, giving myself time to listen inside was an absolutely transformative process. To stop and create from there, from calm, from listening. This way of composing puts us in a place of vulnerability and I think it's scary sometimes to put ourselves there, but it's also the place from which more personal works can emerge.
6. Somatic Suspension is a deep personal narrative. Do you want to say something in particular?
More than saying something in particular, I am interested in creating a music like an immense ocean where there are no aesthetic limits, which generates new worlds, memories of the future. Expand the range between intimacy and ecstasy, explore sound almost as a meditation that awakens the kundalini.
7. How have you lived the pandemic time. For many musicians it has been a time of introspection, for others it has been a time of instability and questioning? How did you live it musically?
It has been a very strange time where I think we have realized how vulnerable and interdependent we are. It affected me a lot, I suddenly found myself without a job, with hardly any income, and it was a few months of great uncertainty. What I did was to try to be in the present and not in the constant projection, in the future. Live more on a day-to-day basis.
I think for many artists it has been a good reflection on the modes of production, this way of working with stress, automation, traveling from one place to another... we have become very critical of those ways of creating. The pandemic has slowed down the tempo of life and I hope we have learned something from that.
8. From your perspective, how do you see the Spanish music scene, the current empowerment of women composers in a patriarchal society, and the proposal of current artists?
It' s wonderful to see the Spanish music scene, we are in a vibrant moment in all styles. Finally I feel that in Spain we are creating in a more avant-garde and global way, we are looking outwards, musicians have studied abroad and come back with new ideas, breaking the schemes, daring to mix styles and media. There are more and more female composers, more female performers and more female curators. Now there needs to be more female professors in composition and in positions of responsibility.
On the other hand, sound art books in which all references are male are still published and I still find it hard to find women's names in specialized magazines. So yes, we are doing better, but we are still half way, we can't let our guard down for a second.
Hara Alonso
Photo by Isla De Paula
9. You live in Stockholm. How do you feel that audience-artist relationship in your environment?
In general I would say that Sweden is a good country for culture, there is a lot of support for non-commercial music. However, the more alternative music still has a small audience and often the audience has a similar age range, or even gender.
In my projects I try to create a link with the public and, to bring my music closer to younger audiences. For example, a few weeks ago I did a collaborative composition project called "The City Composing", in which anyone can participate in the creation of a concert. A group of teenagers participated with their scores and they were super happy with the result. Sometimes I think we are too obsessed with the "what" and not so much with the "how", for me it has to be linked to the "how".
10. Finally, what are you currently working on and what are your plans for the future?
I'm immersed in several dance and interactive digital art projects, so I'm programming a lot. I'm already thinking about a new album, this time in collaboration, I intend to invite artists from very different fields and see what comes out. I'm in a moment of uprooting and searching, so I'm open to the unknown. Who knows, maybe I'll end up doing a Battiato cover.