Clarinetista peruano

Some months ago I made a video of "Baile", a great piece by Argentinian composer Francisco Colasanto. This video was featured in Sequenza21 and, between the visitors who watched this video was American composer Alex Shapiro.

She contacted me via e-mail and told me about her piece for contrabasson and electronics called "Deep", and luckily for me, she made an adaptation for contrabass clarinet and electronics.


The piece sounds "easy to play" but it demands a lot of control - I wanted to play each phrase as elegant as possible, effortless. To control the intonation is always a challenge in the Selmer instruments.

At the end, I made this video for YouTube and Alex seems to be very happy about it, and me too. I love the music and I hope I can have soon the opportunity to perform this work live.
I met Fernando Benandón in the USA after he wrote a cool piece for Thelema Trio ("Five Miniatures"). This exquisite work is scored for bass clarinet, baritone saxophone and left hand piano (!).

Some months ago, he told me about a new project, where he wants to collect sounds from different musicians and composed from them. I'm happy to be one of those musicians. We have not met or interacted in any way...


I had to play (improvised) music and sounds for about 3 hours with clarinet and bass clarinet, and send my sound material to him. I have to say I'm very curious to hear what Fernando's collage will sound - we are eight musician: Courtney Orlando, Evan Price, Kurt Rohde, Michael Formanek, Nasar Abadey, Fred Irby III, Chris Froh and myself.

The CD will be named "Improfission" and I'm sure it will be a very creative sound adventure.
Our presentation at the 25th anniversary gala concert of Harmonia Classica, has been released in a triple CD by this organization. The CD features many composers from all over the world, with very contrasting pieces - solo, voice and piano to brass quintet.

Duo DICTO live version of "Sonus Dulics" is the first track of the third CD. We are very pleased with the result.

In case you would like to hear more from us, you can watch this video of "Necrólogo", a piece for bass clarinet and piano by Venezuelan composer Icli Zitella.
Bassoon: Václav Vonásek; flute: Lenka Konderková; clarinet: Marco Mazzini;
English horn: Jacqueline Leclair; oboe: Vilém Veverka



Last May 2007 I had the great opportunity to perform in one of the best concert halls in the world: the famous Carnegie Hall. I played as a member of the Ostrava International Orchestra (Czech Republic), and as a guest musician with the S.E.M Ensemble of New York, both conducted by Petr Kotik.

With these ensembles I played music by Stefan Wolpe, Iannis Xenakis and Earle Brown. I also performed Karheinz Stockhausen's quintet "Zeitmaße" with my colleagues of the Czech orchestra - a tricky piece to play! These works asked me to play clarinets (Bb and A) and bass clarinet.

Rehearsals went very fine and the final concert was attended by a large audience. We had a positive review at the New York Times.

During this time in New York, I had the great opportunity to meet Jerry, the man behind Sequenza21 - we had a nice lunch together talking about a bit of everything. He was very kind to create this entrance in his blog.

A wonderful experience, full of good friends and good music.
This April 27th I will be performing in Vienna for the first time as Duo DICTO - with my good friend Ward De Vleeschhouwer.

The occasion is the 25th Aniversary of Harmonia Classica, a musical organization who "has the goal to perform also pieces of living composers who write in a classical style. Beauty is the common denominator which determines the selection of the compositions".

We were invited to perform Adrian Pertout's "Sonus Dulcis", a wonderful tonal work that was adapted for clarinet and piano specially for us. This live concert will be released as a double CD by Harmonia Classica.

Chilean composer Andrian Pertout gave us some time ago, the permission to film this piece, and we have published it here in YouTube. The long slap tongue passage is always a challenge to play.
After some years of performing together as a trio, we finally released our first full CD named "Thelema..." This recording features some of our "old pieces", all works composed specially for us since 2003. The recording was quite demanding - in my case, "Le Retour du Golem" for contrabass clarinet was a big challenge, and "Clarmaggeddon" which asks so many (very) high notes on the clarinet! In this recording I didn't have the chance to play the bass clarinet. I will have to wait for the next one.

The released concert took place the 25th April 2006 in the Royal Conservatory of Ghent, the corner where we all met in 2002. It was a beautiful night with an enthusiastic public. This is our website, and this link our MySpace.