Cadavre exquis

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Performer: G.at.0 (Núria Andorrà, Wade Matthews, Marina Hervás, Pedro Alcalde)
Event: IF 2022 – Improvisation Festival
Venue: International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), University of Guelph, Canada
Date: August 26-28, 2022
Co-presented by: 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos, Mexico

Cadavre Exquis – 17 minutes of free improvisation for 17 – Instituto de Estudios Críticos

The free improvisation group G.at.0 (Pedro Alcalde, Núria Andorrà, Marina Hervás, Wade Matthews, Henar Rivière) works with, on, and around the practice of free improvisation. Their debut performance took place at IF 2022 – Improvisation Festival, organized by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) at the University of Guelph (Canada). On this occasion, the piece was structured around the principle of cadavre exquis, a technique born in surrealist circles in which each performer contributes a fragment that is unpredictably assembled.

In the performance of Cadavre Exquis, the piano part incorporates extended techniques that broaden the instrument’s timbral possibilities. This approach, which ranges from piano preparation to direct string manipulation and resonances, has become a common practice in free improvisation, opening up new forms of sonic interaction and expressive exploration. For this reason, the challenge for me was also how to return to the keys and how to introduce the sound of a traditional chord into this new context.