Paraules (Words) is a new album from percussionist Noè Rodrigo Gisbert on the IBS Classical label in Spain. It is exclusively available in Stereo DSD 512, DSD 256, DSD 128 and DSD 64 at NativeDSD. The album features music composed by Iannis Xenakis, Salvatore Sciarrino, Edison Denisov, Silvia Borzelli, Polo Vallejo, Bruno Mantovani and Jesús Torres. 

If in the beginning music was verb, like singing, shortly after it became percussion: initially, doubling the prosody of the voice; later, introducing a growing range of rhythms and colors that have made it the most heterogeneous, surprising and multicultural of all the instrumental families. Noè Rodrigo Gisbert explores this relationship between music and percussion in his solo album Paraules.

The Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis went back to that relationship between percussion and singing in Psappha (1975), whose title refers to the Aeolic name of the poetess Sappho (Ψάπφα), whose verses inspire the union of the archaic and the modern, of sensuality and violence that we hear in Psappha. For Salvatore Sciarrino the poetic word is also a continuous source of inspiration, making the instruments sing in his catalogue. In Schwarze Wolken (1984), a work for vibraphone by the Russian composer Edison Denisov, percussion becomes a landscape: that of the Black Clouds to which the title of the work alludes.

The Roman composer Silvia Borzelli explores in Wooden (2015) the timbre of wood by means of a marimba, a log drum and a woodblock. Since the 1980s, the Spanish composer and ethnomusicologist Polo Vallejo has been studying the vocal polyphony of the Wagogo in Tanzania, a culture that has made music ‘the soul of an entire community.’ In Moi, jeu… (1998), the second part of the triptych Suite Ludique (1996-99), the French composer Bruno Mantovani carries out a new exploration of color on the marimba, as well as chords and patterns. Jesús Torres concludes the disc with his work for marimba and vibraphone Tiento (1997), a score that shares virtuosity with Moi, jeu…, complementing it with an ‘intimate expression.’

The Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis went back to that relationship between percussion and singing in Psappha (1975), whose title refers to the Aeolic name of the poetess Sappho (Ψάπφα), whose verses inspire the union of the archaic and the modern, of sensuality and violence that we hear in Psappha. Noè Rodrigo Gisbert’s version seeks the breadth of sound, the balance of registers, the sensation of simultaneity and the sudden changes of timbre desired by Xenakis, creating the illusion of listening to a percussion ensemble rather than a single musician.

Noè Rodrigo Gisbert, Percussion