Everyday Fanfare: A Tutorial
by Jose Iges

The fanfare to which the title alludes is shown in the work little by little, which invites a kaleidoscopic listening. It appears cut up, metamorphosed, deconstructed; interacting with various circumstances and environments, as often happens to the people to whom it’s dedicated: those whose daily heroics tend to go too unnoticed, except on rare occasions. It is a fanfare prêt-à-porter that does not observe etiquette and can be adapted to different bodies and situations. It is to be used every day. Even to take it as a ringtone on the mobile in one of its versions.

All the materials of this work have been either taken from the web or from my own sound files. And with a few small exceptions, there are no physical interpreters, but virtual ones, the result of work on a score editor. Thus, one of its points of tension is found in the insertion of the real into the virtual and vice versa. The work also has a nomadic background, as in others of my production in which real sounds from the environment are incorporated, although they sometimes appear partially transformed with electronic resources. Consequently, among the different approaches to the original fanfare or in dialogue with them, we hear toads in a garden in Caracas, birds in a garden in Mantua, masts fluttering by the wind in the port of Vilanova, a parade atmosphere at the Seville Expo, bells pealing in the Monastery of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, the rattle of a train in Rome, the start of a concert somewhere, a market in Guanajuato, the sound of water in the Alhambra…

But this work that is offered for listening must also be considered as a tutorial that shows some of the possible uses of this fanfare in everyday life, which on the other hand justifies the use of virtual sounds. For this purpose, the scores of its different versions and orchestrations -not only those used here- would be available to those interested for purchase or rental for public o private uses.

The fanfare as a musical genre is conceived to serve in public, solemn and basically affirmative acts, such as an official proclamation, a party, a ceremony. That is why this Fanfare -conceived for possible or impossible occasions, which could sometimes make it inconceivable- has a public and social vocation. It is not prescribed to commemorate illegal annexations of territories or to celebrate the rise to power of rulers with blood on their hands, but - as I said - to highlight the daily achievements of ordinary people. (Jose Iges, Madrid, 2022)

La Ciudad 2021 / The City 2021
by José Iges

La Ciudad 2021 is a game of strata almost of sound archaeology. It is a "distillate", if we prefer, of all the previous versions and terminals of the project, bringing together fragments of them and incorporating recordings of the present in which the work is built. As in the initial work of 1998 and in all subsequent ones, the author's own archive is the source for a composition posed as a synthesis of diverse spaces and times.

We listen to a mosaic of mixed and juxtaposed realities, which is situated between the collage and the electroacoustic soundscape, since the original sounds are sometimes evaporated by electronics and at other times they can be heard in their original state, almost as testimonials. As I have already commented, the project has lived in its different interpretations and transformations a nomadic and traveling existence: that is why this conclusive work, in addition to being nourished by fragments of concerts performed in various places such as Bilbao, Bogotá, Colonia, Madrid, Manizales or Morelia , is built with sounds collected in cities as different and distant from each other as Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Mexico City, Cologne, Karlsruhe, Havanna, Madrid, Paris, Vienna...

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