Beatriz Ferreyra was born in Cordoba, Argentina, and studied piano with Celia Bronstein in Buenos Aires. She continued her study of music with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and Edgardo Canton, Earle Brown and György Ligeti in Germany. In 1963 she took a position in the research department of the Office de Radiodiffusion Television Francaise (ORTF), working with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) directed by Pierre Schaeffer. She assisted with Henri Chiarucci's and Guy Reibel's Rapport entre la hauteur et la fondamentale d'un son musical, published in 1966 in Revue Internationale d'Audiologie and Pierre Schaeffer's Solfège de l'Objet Sonore. During this time, she also lectured at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. She worked with Bernard Baschet and his Structures Sonores in 1970, and served residencies in electronic music with Dartmouth College in 1976 and in 1998.
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RM 4210LP
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"I'm not really sure when I first heard Beatriz Ferreyra's music. My best guess would be in the early to mid-2000s when I was working alongside the curatorial team at Liquid Architecture. Given the focus of the festival at that time, GRM and musique concrète more generally was very much a point of focus. That said, it wasn't until this decade that her work was sharply in focus for me (and I am guessing a great many others). In 2017, I had the great pleasure to meet Beatriz in Braga, where we both were performing as part of the excellent Semibreve Festival. Subsequent to that I invited her to perform in Australia and we also had the pleasure to send time together in Rio during the Novas Frequencies Festival. Across these meetings, I have come to realize the incredible focus, generosity and vision that Beatriz has maintained across her life in sound. Beatriz Ferreyra is one of only a handful of female concrète composers who were active across the second half of the 20th century through to today. Her work, which is still very much an active investigation, is simultaneously complex and elegantly simple. Often drawing upon singular object of focus, Ferreyra's use of tape and other forms of manipulation radically reconfigure her chosen sound materials, opening them outward. UFO Forest + collects together works from both her practices in tape-based music and also computer-based works. The pieces featured here epitomize her prowess in create dynamically rich sound works that are effortless in their sense of otherworldliness. Beatriz Ferreyra has created a sonic terrain all her own, and here lies the proof." --Lawrence English
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REGRM 027LP
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2023 restock. "Senderos de luz y sombras" (Paths of Light and Shadows) -- Commissioned by the French State for INA grm -- 2016-2020. In memoriam Bernard Baschet, Bernard Parmegiani, and Carlos Pellegrino. A 16-channel piece inspired by astrophysics, the mystery of the pre-Big Bang era and some of the uncanny motions of the unconscious mind, where strangeness meets the ordinary. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin, July 2021. Translations: Valérie Vivancos. Layout: Stephen O'Malley.
"The themes that permeate Senderos de luz y sombras simultaneously engage the overwhelming, unyielding immensity of the beginnings of the universe and the forces at work in the unconscious mind. What connects these themes are the dark energies operating outside our knowledge, far beyond the conceptual scope of our limited thinking. How to convey all this and build music from these concealed forces? What Beatriz Ferreyra achieves, thanks to her trademark virtuosity, is precisely to summon energies, to bring in the raw forces that govern the laws of acoustics, so as to trigger sonic storms as one would call the rain, to transform all sound matters into the core of a ritual. Indeed, Beatriz Ferreyra addresses the mind-body reconciliation, for in providing this unique sound and musical experience, with a rare sensitive intensity, the great composer simultaneously invites us to engage in a personal experience." --François Bonnet, Paris, 2021
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RM 4136LP
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Argentine born, French based composer Beatriz Ferreyra has played a hushed but utterly critical role in the development of musique concrète since its early days. Working alongside Pierre Schaeffer during the writing of Solfège de l'Objet Sonore, Ferreyra left GRM to pursue her compositional research outside the confines of the institution. Canto+, one of only a few collections of her work available on vinyl, collects work across four decades and demonstrates her immense capacities both as a composer and a sonic explorer.
From Lawrence English: "... In 2017, I had the great pleasure to meet Beatriz in Braga, where we both were performing as part of the excellent Semibreve Festival. Subsequent to that I invited her to perform in Australia and we also had the pleasure to send time together this year in Rio during the Novas Frequencies Festival. Across these meetings, I have come to realize the incredible focus, generosity and vision that Beatriz has maintained across her life in sound. Beatriz Ferreyra is one of only a few female concrète composers who were active across the second half of the 20th century through to today. Her work, which is still very much an active investigation, is simultaneously complex and elegantly simple. Often drawing upon singular object of focus, Ferreyra's use of tape and other forms of manipulation radically reconfigure her chosen sound materials, opening them outward. Canto+, collects works from almost 40 years of her life in music and pays homage to her unerring interests in dynamism, rhythm, voice and the morphic potentials of concrète materials. Two of the works are also dedication to close friends; "Jingle Bayle's" (to François Bayle) and "Au revoir l'Ami" (to Bernard Bashet). This edition picks up where Echos+ leaves off and opens her sound worlds even further.
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RM 4114LP
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Argentine born, French based composer Beatriz Ferreyra has played a hushed but utterly critical role in the development of musique concrète since its early days. Working alongside Pierre Schaeffer during the writing of Solfège de l'Objet Sonore, Ferreyra left GRM to pursue her compositional research outside the confines of the institution. Echos+, one of only a few collections of her work available on vinyl, collects three of her most affecting pieces; each of which explore questions of mortality and the afterlife.
Lawrence English: "I'm not really sure when I first heard Beatriz Ferreyra's music. My best guess would be in the early to mid-2000s when I was working alongside the curatorial team at Liquid Architecture. Given the focus of the festival at that time, GRM and musique concrète more generally was very much a point of focus. That said, it wasn't until this decade that her work was sharply in focus for me (and I am guessing a great many others). In 2017, I had the great pleasure to meet Beatriz in Braga, where we both were performing as part of the excellent Semibreve Festival. Subsequent to that I invited her to perform in Australia and we also had the pleasure to send time together this year in Rio during the Novas Frequencies Festival. Across these meetings, I have come to realise the incredible focus, generosity and vision that Beatriz has maintained across her life in sound. Beatriz Ferreyra is one of only a few female concrète composers who were active across the second half of the 20th century through to today. Her work, which is still very much an active investigation, is simultaneously complex and elegantly simple. Often drawing upon singular object of focus, Ferreyra's use of tape and other forms of manipulation radically reconfigure her chosen sound materials, opening them outward. 'Echos' for example is sourced entirely from recordings of her niece who was killed in a car accident and 'The Other Shore' (composed as a response to the Tibetan Book Of The Dead) uses only percussion. Echos+ brings together three of Ferreyra's most engaging compositions. Each of the works are deeply personal, but transcend that position, effortlessly welcoming us inside them. They collectively chart out a broad framework that not only defines her philosophical interests as a composer, but also marks out critical moments in her creative and technical approaches; shifting from her roots in tape music to more digital approaches."
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REGRM 015LP
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Argentine electroacoustic composer Beatriz Ferreyra describes each of the pieces included on GRM Works: Demeures aquatiques (1967): "This electroacoustic piece, articulated into two clearly distinct parts, draws its sound source from the classical and unorthodox instruments -- metal sheets, glass rods, etc. -- invented by the Baschet brothers. I wanted to show the contrast between the rhythmic repetition of a sounding object, which gives out a feeling of fixity, an electroacoustic flavour and the continuous re-creation of the same sensation through similar yet not identical sounds." Un fil invisible (2009) For Christine Groult: "This piece was inspired by the various stages of Medieval Alchemy. The alchemical process is one of transformation, whose actual subject is the alchemist himself. Here, the process is inextricably tangled with the transformation of sounds and the very structure of the piece." Médisances (1968/69): "This electroacoustic piece for 4 channels was produced by manipulating such items as orchestral instruments, a mouth bow, breath and some unexpected technical defects." Les Larmes de l'inconnu (2011): "This is the first part of a work inspired by the Qabalists Carlos Suares (consciousness-energy), Rivka Cremici (charm of the mystic energy) and Shinta Zenke (dazzling Hebrew calligraphy) to whom I dedicate this music. Through its letters-numbers, the Qabalah expresses three different levels of 'primordial equation of the universe': the level of the archetype, that of the event and the incarnation, and the universal and cosmic level... I would like to thank the wonderful flutist Hernan Gomez for his kindness and his musicality during the recording." "The music of Beatriz Ferreyra bears a magnetic force, which generates a truly recognisable style that could be defined as a unique sense and intuition for sound. Whether in her early works ('Médisances,' 'Demeures aquatiques') or in the more recent ones featured here, one can easily perceive a freedom-loving musical personality. A pioneer alongside Pierre Schaeffer, in the '50s and '60s, she worked on the development of the famous Solfège de l'Objet Sonore (Music Theory of the Sounding Object) before freeing herself from the institution to focus on creating a challenging and independent music." --Christian Zanési and François Bonnet, Paris, 2015. Digital transfer by Jonathan Fitoussi; layout by Stephen O'Malley; photos by Laszlo Ruszka (1983/87) © Ina, Bernard Perrine (1969); translations by Valérie Vivancos. Coordination GRM: Christian Zanési & François Bonnet. Executive production: Peter Rehberg. Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, November 2014.
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