AlterFace

Alter Face was founded in 2011 with the aim of renewing musical and scenic concepts in the repertoire for piano duos and ensembles. An open attitude towards experimentation has led this ensemble to promote numerous premieres for piano manipulated by two performers, piano and video, or installations by composers such as Alberto Bernal, Iker Güemes, Sami Klemola, Michael Maierhof, Remmy Canedo, Enric Riu, François Rossé, among others.

Its artistic collaborations extend to creators from Europe as well as Latin America, such as Tomás Koljátic. One of the ensemble’s most fruitful collaborations has revolved around Mantra by K. Stockhausen, in the version they created together with Remmy Canedo for the Musik der Jahrhundert festival (Stuttgart) and the 55th Pollença Festival. They have also performed it at the Contemporary Music Festival of the Catholic University of Santiago (Chile) alongside composer and researcher Rodrigo Cádiz, as well as at the MEMMIX Festival.

Since 2014, the duo has been formed by Albert Díaz and Tomeu Moll-Mas, beginning a highly dynamic stage with several premieres and performances at festivals such as Encontre de Compositors, Festival Carmelo Bernaola (Vitoria), Festival de Música Contemporánea de Bilbao, Mixtur (Barcelona), Smash (Salamanca), Unerhörte Musik (Berlin), PHONA (Mallorca), Convent de Sant Agustí (Barcelona), among others.

Albert Díaz and Tomeu Moll-Mas already have an extensive trajectory as performers of both classical and contemporary music, mainly in venues and festivals across Europe and the Americas. As soloists, they premiered Gran Mar, for piano four-hands plus two extra hands (six hands total), electronics and orchestra, with the Balearic Islands Symphony Orchestra conducted by Zsolg Nagy.

ALTER-FACE CONCERT PROGRAM

* World premiere
** European premiere
The works Esquerdes d’ombra and Nur have received support for the creation of contemporary music from the IEB.

Albert Díaz and Tomeu Moll-Mas, piano
Sebastian Schottke, sound engineering

Program Notes ME_MMIX 2025

The ALTER-FACE duo enthusiastically accepted the ME_MMIX commission to design a program featuring works by contemporary creators from the Balearic Islands.
For this edition of the Festival, we present a selection of pieces written specifically for the duo of pianists Tomeu Moll-Mas and Albert Díaz, three of which are world premieres.
The program emerged through a process of dialogue with composers from the archipelago, resulting in four contrasting works that explore diverse dimensions and resources of contemporary piano composition.

The first two pieces, 89 esquerdes d’ombra and Nur, are for piano four hands and electronics.
In 89 esquerdes d’ombra, by Menorcan composer Francesc Llompart, the electronic sounds are integrated into this chamber setting through audio tracks triggered by the pianists, depending on specific sonic events that occur during the piano performance. Llompart’s formal inventiveness makes each performance of the work different, imbuing it with a distinctive freshness.

Nur, by Xavier Gelabert from Manacor, is inspired by the figure of Nuredduna, the mythological character in La deixa del geni grec, a poem by Miquel Costa i Llobera.
An acoustic piano dialogues with the electronic sounds of a microtonal piano where, for example, each note above A4 is tuned +[6.25 x n] cents higher (1/32 tone) and each note below -[6.25 x n] cents lower. That is: A4=0; Bb=+6.25; B=+12.50, etc.
Microtonality has been one of Gelabert’s key interests in recent years, and this concert offers a striking example where mathematical precision shapes the sonic result down to the smallest detail.

Meditació 1, by Ibizan composer Mariano Torres, was originally written for a solo pianist. For this ME_MMIX Festival, Alter-Face presents a version for pianist and manipulator.
Torres’s sound material is rooted in tonal music and reflective minimalism, which Alter-Face expands through an improvisation on the piano strings—creating harmonics, frictions, and unexpected sounds—to conceptually extend the original composition.

The program closes with La mar dins un sac, by Maties Far from Mallorca, a piece that develops sonic materials first used in Gran Mar, for six-hand piano, electronics, and orchestra, premiered by Alter-Face, Llorenç Prats, and the OSIB conducted by Zsolt Nagy in 2022.
The poetics of the sea is one of its most evident influences, alongside the poetry of Miquel Bauçà from Felanitx.
La mar dins un sac is an exuberant display of sonic inventiveness imagined by Far and produced through various objects applied to the piano strings, frame, and keys.
The cascade of pianistic whispers in this work can be heard thanks to the precise sound amplification devised by the composer and sound engineer Sebastian Schottke.

More information:

• Interview-concert Tv show Els entusiastes d’IB3:

Ater Face Piano Ensemble a “Els Entusiastes” d’IB3

• Teaser HOLO#2BB

HOLO #1B teaser 2

• F. Rossé: Ost Inside a Unerhörte Musik, Berlin:

https://youtu.be/-wHwEF9GbZA?si=lQKF-uQ2wJrGEMUG

• W. Rihm: Klavierstück 3, Op. 8c a Unerhörte Musik, Berlin:

Wolfgang Rihm: Klavierstück Nr. 3, Op 8c // Alter Face piano ensemble

• Iker Güemes: Sóc soka a Unerhörte Musik, Berlin:

Iker Güemes: “Sóc Soka” // Alter Face piano ensemble

• K. Stockhausen: Mantra al Festival de Pollença 2016

Alter Face: “Mantra” at Festival de Pollença