ROAI V (2010)
(for clarinet, viola and prepared piano)

For almost ten years I have been fascinated by the Heraclitean phrase "Ta panta rei" ("everything flows"), which serves as a source of inspiration for my chamber music cycle ROAI.

Moving statics and constant permutation meet in this short movement and reflect sociological, biological or physical micro and macro forms. In short: they reflect life itself!

After the attempt to depict the ambiguity of flow in the previous works of the cycle, the idea of flowing sound in space was born. A sound that is virtually controlled from the stage and sent into the hall. The "Trio" formation is broken up and re-formed. Viola and bass clarinet sit to the right and left behind the audience and receive the signals that the piano sends from the stage. The principle of the ballad (a narrative that is continued in a circle of several people after a ball is thrown) and midi technology (short binary electrical signals that are "played" by a keyboard to animate a note) merge into one another. In this way, certain musical events (oscillations, small motifs, noises or various patterns) are assigned to the piano keyboard, which are quasi "switched on and off" while playing on the keyboard, i.e. performed by the two instruments behind the audience, as if from two loudspeakers. The result is a spatially interactive, flowing trio that attempts to imitate a sampler

Minas Borboudakis, October 2010