Work: Sikuri II
Composer: Juan Arroyo
Instruments: alto saxophone, percussions and electronics
Duration: 14:30 minutes
World premiere: October 15, 2023, at the MAD Festival, Bordeaux, France
Commissioned by: Proxima Centauri, with the generous support of SACEM
Publisher: Questions de Tempéraments
Sikuri II is part of a cycle dedicated to the sounds of the Andes, initiated in 2012 with the creation of Sikuri I, for tenor saxophone without a mouthpiece and electronic devices. Its title, Sikuri, comes from Aymara, a language spoken notably by the peoples located at the Peruvian-Bolivian border, and means «pan flute player.» It was in 2011, during a working session at the IRCAM studios, that I discovered the similarities between the sound of the saxophone without a mouthpiece and that of the pan flute, my first instrument. The new possibilities offered by repurposing the instrument, filtering sounds through the position of the mouth or the intensity of breath, and modeling the timbre of the pan flute with electronic means, unveiled a universe connected to my mother tongue. With Sikuri II, the integration of percussion became obvious. During popular festivities in some villages founded several meters above sea level in the Andes, sikuris gather to perform sikuriadas. During these moments, they play the pan flute and carry an animal-skin drum that serves as musical accompaniment. The composition of Sikuri II, achieved thanks to the collaboration of the Proxima Centauri ensemble and the support of SCRIME, allowed me to explore and refine the writing for the alto saxophone without a mouthpiece, develop the idea of sound hybridization which is intrinsic to my artistic approach, and express through music the intensity, spaces, and colors of Latin America that I carry within me.