Agustín Castilla Ávila – Minimalismore

Three premieres by Agustín Castilla Ávila.

The Spanish guitarist and composer Agustín Castilla Ávila (Jerez de la Frontera, 1974) will perform an instrumental programme dedicated exclusively to his work this coming Monday, 8 November, in the Große Aula of the University of Salzburg. Entitled Exchange of Instrumental Techniques, the programme includes works composed under his artistic research on the processes of import and export of instrumental techniques in the composition and performance of contemporary music. In other words, what happens when the technique used to play one instrument is transferred to another.

The concert will feature the participation of international instrumentalists who have collaborated with the Spanish composer who has been living in Austria for years, such as the Austrian guitarist Yvonne Zehner, some members of the American Cygnus Ensemble (Margarethe Hlawa-Grundner, Annemarie Moorcroft, Susannah Chapman and William Anderson), the Spanish ensemble Neopercusión (Rafa Gálvez, Nerea Vera and Juanjo Guillém) and the Spanish guitarist Pilar Rius Fortea. The recital will feature three world premieres: one piece, Something to do with a Harp (for a guitarist with two hanging electric guitars), by Pilar Rius Fortea (who explains that, with the extended technique, “the guitars are played as if they were a harp. This is the same technique that Juanjo Guillem, who is a percussionist, is going to use in ‘¡Cajones! 1‘, to play the guitar as if it were a percussion instrument”); another piece by Cygnus Ensemble – Rondò (for violin, viola, cello and guitar) – and one more, Mycelium (for violinist, cellist, guitarist and percussionist in an installation of 4 electric guitars) – which will be performed jointly by several of the members of Cygnus Ensemble and Rafa Gálvez, from Neopercusión.