Ostinato micromacro, the last piece in the Radiolaria cycle, evokes the evolution of plankton on a planetary scale, ie: over billions of years. Planktonic organisms have survived from the early times of the appearance of life on Earth, when volcano lava was still generously flowing, up to the Anthropocene, fine-tuning their morphologies and modes of existence to reach the forms we see today.

To illustrate this idea, I composed simple, stripped-down minimalist music that unfolds slowly. The ostinato represents time ticking away inexorably, and the electronic sounds with irregular rhythms are the plankton dancing with the currents. The nature of these sounds is evolving little by little as eras pass by. I wanted to tell the tale of microscopic evolutions over macroscopic times.

— Ana Dall’Ara-Majek [English translation: François Couture, xii-23]

Ostinato micromacro was realized in 2023 at Studio Blue Spider in Montréal (Québec) from recordings made in 2022 at the Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm (Sweden). Thanks to the entire EMS team. The realization of this piece was made possible thanks to the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ).

Preparation

• June 27 – July 10, 2022, Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), Stockholm (Sweden)

Composition

• June – August 2023, Studio Blue Spider, Montréal (Québec)