Recall This Book: Francisco del Pino

BY JOHN PLOTZ

Francisco del Pino is a widely celebrated composer from Buenos Aires, and currently a Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University. John fell in love with his music (during his own semester there) when he heard a piece based on the poetry of Francisco’s longtime friend Victoria Cóccaro. Recall This Book seized the chance to speak with del Pino (in John’s weirdly resonant office) about composition and collaboration.

J. S. Bach: Why Francisco is interested in abstract or even inhuman pieces (e.g. 1747 Musical Offering.) that may have been written without any particular instrument in mind.

John brings up whale songs, thinking of the memorable 1979 National Geographic record he listened to as a kid.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE

READ THE EPISODE HERE

To witness ‘The Thunder of the Present’: A thrilling encounter with the vocal music of today

BY JACK GALLAHAN

[…] During the performance I felt that del Pino was constantly in conversation with Cóccaro. In the first part of the piece, the solo soprano intones Cóccaro’s text as a one-pitch melody — a musical axis around which pre-recorded voices orbit, singing the lines “the sea shifts like / thought / like thoughts / when you think under water” in ever-changing rhythmic and harmonic combinations. This compositional juxtaposition of an individual against a shifting background resonated powerfully with the text. Indeed, in the poem, a nameless identity reflects repeatedly on the act of writing, as in the beautiful lines “to write in the end is to wait / to see a likeness / between a brain and the top of a tree.” Alongside this thread is a vivid evocation of the passage of time as a continual process of renewal: “in all things there is water / all the time the sea / that is always beginning.” In the second half of the composition, the soprano abandons her one-pitch melody, sinking into the texture of the pre-recorded voices — a self dissolved in the hypnotic peace of an eternally shifting sea.

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El Flasherito diario: Lo sonoro arrebata la forma

BY MATÍAS HEER

“A fines del 2021 la poeta Victoria Cóccaro y el músico Francisco del Pino (que ya habían colaborado en un proyecto en conjunto para el TACEC: Decir) publicaron una pieza para seis voces mixtas llamada Cueva. Bajo el influjo del hábito adquirido podríamos decir que la pieza fue elaborada en base al poema de Cóccaro, pero la pieza no está diseñada en base a como una mera consecuencia musical del poema, ni el poema la causa que desencadena el efecto musical o viceversa. Como vengo argumentando en artículos previos toda situación artística funciona en una iteración de todas las partes a todas las partes y no como una serie de sumas retrodecibles y causales. Es decir, no se trata de la suma de las partes: traducción + música + poesía, sino de una tercera instancia performativa que emerge de iteraciones no lineales. Las reglas implícitas (no por ello inherentes) a la traducción, a la música, a la poesía, pasan a configurar una tercera instancia de reglas donde el producto trasciende los pequeños límites que pre asumimos de cada actividad artística. A partir de eso se configuran nuevas reglas de juego y, por ende, nuevas técnicas.”

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CLASSICAL POST: Francisco del Pino, Decir

BY DEBBIE DRINGEL

“Decir—“to say”—is the debut seven-piece song cycle from Francisco del Pino, an award-winning Argentine composer who journeys the folds between classical and vernacular traditions. Imagined as the staging of a long poem, Decir was scored for voice, electric guitar, viola, and percussion, with lyrics by Argentine poet Victoria Cóccaro; Spanish to English translations were aided by Rebekah Smith. Cecilia Pastorino, a classically trained soprano—an acclaimed figure in South America’s folk scene—sings Cóccaro’s haunting lyrics of migration, displacement, and the rise of historically silenced voices.”

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PRESS RELEASE: Francisco del Pino’s “Decir” Out Now

“del Pino’s vision is ethereal, yet heavy, distinguished, yet humble—and always beautiful.” —Classical Post

Out today, Francisco del Pino’s Decir is a seven-piece song cycle with timely lyrics of migration, displacement, and the rise of historically silenced voices.

As del Pino notes for the album premiere at I Care If You Listen, “A deliberately expressive and emotionally charged work, Decir seeks to synthesize the immediacy of contemporary popular songwriting and the architecture of early counterpoint.”

SOURCE: https://www.newamrecords.com/news-press/2021/5/14/press-release-francisco-del-pinos-decir-out-now