‘Shutterspeed’ by Arnold Marinissen and ‘Capriccios of the world’ by Maxim Shalygin for clarinet and soundtrack on the China tour program by Michel Marang. Both pieces are part of the ’Shifting Images’ project started many years ago by Michel Marang. A programme in which new music is performed together with Marang’s photographic sequences.

Marinissen’s ‘Shutterspeed’ is based on the sounds of photo cameras from different eras, and snippets from 250 years of clarinet music. With these two kinds of material a soundtrack was created, in which the camera sounds, primarily shutter action, envelope the clarinet ‘snapshots’. A clarinet part was then composed as the soundtrack’s live counterpart, commentating, connecting, accompanying, extending, embellishing and contrasting the enigmatic material of the soundtrack. Marang premiered the piece in 2020, toured it extensively, and now takes the piece to China.

Shalygin’s ‘‘Capriccios of the world’ is a cyclus of two books and nine parts, each linked to the musical traditions of a particular country, making a kind of journey around the world.
The nine countries are: Sudan, England, Georgia, Ukraine, Japan, Spain, China, India and Purgatory. Each part combines a lot of instrumental samples, voices and other elements of folklore, which are distorted in a bizarre way, creating a peculiar version of modern folklore. The musical material comes from traditional features, but it is not an imitation. The composer transforms semantic images to a new level, creating unusual combinations of sounds, rhythms and melodies.