‘Echoes+’ is a new LP on Room40 by 82 year old Argentinian composer Beatriz Ferreyra. It combines two voice-based recordings and a percussion piece.

“Music changes as life changes”

First things first: how are you?

I’m ok.

How do you spent your days now? Which role does music play in your life these days?

I have the same life as always because I have a garden, I paint and I compose. The only change is: no concerts.

Do you think artists suffer less from isolation than ‘normal people’ because they are used to spent time on their own?

It is impossible to talk about other people. Each person has his own way to live trough this event because everybody is different.

Your new LP ‘Echos+’ combines recordings from 1978, 1987 and 2007. How did you make the selection for the recordings you used on this album?

I didn’t made the selection. It has been done by Lawrence English.

<a href="http://room40.bandcamp.com/album/echos">Echos + by Beatriz Ferreyra</a>

If you listen to these 3 recordings now yourself, so many years after you made them, what do you hear?

I heard these 3 pieces all these years during my concerts so I hear them the same way.

Is an artist a good judge of his own work? Should an artist be able to listen to its own work objectively, or is that an illusion?

What other artists feel is their problem.

I think that I had a lot of recordings in my life. I don’t like to do philosophy about music and feelings. These are very personal.

I saw you live once, in 2017 in Brussels. I got to know your music 2 years before, through the ‘GRM Works’ LP on Editions Mego. Do you think there’s a new generation of people who discovered your work the last couple of years?

I don’t know if there’s new generation of people who discovered my music the last couple of years because I always had been in touch with all generations. Perhaps some electronic music composers never heard electro-acoustic music…

Your discography is rather limited.

Do you think that my discography is rather limited ? I’m a women, and I don’t do electronic music or improvisations.

Why did your musical approach change over the years from analog to computer based music?

Music changes as life changes. Making tape compositions was very difficult. The computer gave more possibilities but the music didn’t change because of the technology. It changed, perhaps, because of the time. I was getting older…

The text that comes with the release of ‘Echos+’ mentions your work is ‘complex and simple’. Is that a combination you’re looking for on purpose?

What people said about my music is their business, but it is always interesting to hear them. At the time, we composed electro-acoustic music with different sounds that came from different sources; voices, instrumental sounds, noises and electronic sounds. We put together sounds. Most of the time, we didn’t change much about a sound. These techniques were the result of Pierre Schaeffer’s way of hearing the sound. He wrote a book about that in 1965, which unfortunately had not been translated in English back then. The book was called ‘Le traité des objets musical’. An English version was released in 2010.

– Joeri Bruyninckx

Beatriz Ferreyra Official Website

Room 40 Official Website

Discography
1 – Médisances in the GRM Vinyl in 1968,
2 – Siesta Blanca in the Viniy of 1975 Fylkingen competition,
3 – Souffle d’un petit Dieu distrait in Sonic Circuits, USA, 1997,
4 – 5 pieces in Chysopee Electronique, Bourges, GMEB 1998,
5 – Rio de los pajaros, Echos, in Cultures electronique 14, in 2000,
6 – La ba-balle du chien-chien à la mé-mère in Compendium International GMEB 2001,
7 – Siesta Blance, Les chemins du vent des glades in Chysopée electronique 12 IMEB the 2002,
8 – Mer d’Azov, archives GRM 2004,
9 – Nahash and Duo, TRACE 2004
10 – Demeures aquatiques in antinomy 2005 Bruxelles, Belgique,
11 – Jazz’t for Miles in 2005 Instrumentos solos CCEBA Buenos Aires Argentine,
12 – 4 pieces in GRM, France 2011,
13 – GRM Vinyl with l’Orvientan 2012,
14 – GRM Vinyl with 4 pieces in 2005
15 – Vinyl with 3 pieces, Echos, L’autre…ou le chant des marécages and L’autre rive, RM1 Vinyl by Lawrence English 2020.
16 – A New Vinyl by Iain Chambers, London 2020 xith 3 pieces.