What the Guitar Remembers
Sequences is built around Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XI — the work that sits at the centre of the contemporary guitar repertoire, and one made almost entirely of borrowed memories: flamenco, the harpsichord, baroque trills, an inherited virtuosity that fractures under its own weight. This programme unfolds those memories one by one. Each surrounding work takes charge of something the Sequenza holds compressed inside itself.
Maurice Ohana’s Tiento (1957) carries the Andalusian memory, still audible but pulled out of tune. Tristan Murail’s Tellur(1977) turns the rasgueado into a means of generating spectra rather than chords. After Berio, Thierry Pécou’s Passacaille(2025) — written for me and premiered at Salle Cortot in March 2025 — answers the baroque strand, and Jeffrey Holmes’s Jörmunr (2019), also dedicated to me, closes the programme with a slow mass of sound named after the Norse world-serpent. The work has never been performed: its world premiere is available to presenters.
The programme is entirely acoustic — six strings, no electronics, no sound engineer, no soundcheck beyond the hall itself. Around 55 minutes without interval.
Experience Berio’s piece firsthand through my video of Sequenza XI, a live recording set in a raw, urbex environment, directed by Julien Hanck from Arpeggio Films.