For tenor saxophone and hi-hat (2022)

At a sufficiently high temperature, any union of materials is possible: heat (the eternal entropy) is a hand that shuffles the cards of any deck. The combination of saxophone and percussion was conceived in the crucible of jazz, originating a formation that has become a classic of our days (perhaps the contemporary equivalent of what once the violin-piano duo represented), thanks to its glaring energetic potential.

Irídea esencia continues the exploration of sound-color correlations of my recent works, willingly restricting the choice of percussions to the sole hi-hat, so as to showcase the varied sonic palette made available through unconventional playing techniques. The hi-hat is seen as a resonating chamber whose shape and dimensions can be continuously modified through different combinations between pedalwork (changing the distance between cymbals), left hand muting techniques and right-hand percussive actions. The air contained inside this resonating chamber is transfigured, yielding multiple sound colors, and through this coloring of air a fundamental contact point is established between two instruments that seemingly have very little in common, establishing in this way the basis that made it possible to conceive this composition.

The title of the piece (translatable as “Iridian essence”) is both an allusion to the visual nature of human perception, both a wordplay in spanish for the phenomenon of iridescence (“Iridescencia”).