Aaron Karila - Composer

Aaron Karila builds a musical universe at the crossroads of sound, gesture, and form.

His approach is based on the idea that movement, shapes, and colors possess an intrinsic musicality that can be expressed in different ways — and that all the art lies in the manner of doing so.

 

With Carnet de croquis, for harp and percussion — a cycle of eight short pieces — the graphic gesture is transformed into sonic material.

The quick strokes and broad lines of the sketch give rise to lively rhythms, sliding timbral play, and melodic noise textures, revealing the spirit of drawing within sound.

 

In Marin au passage de Lyroise, for an ensemble of eleven instruments and influenced by Boulez, the piece is composed like a painting.

It evokes the character of the Iroise Sea, bordering the western coasts of Finistère in Brittany.

The title Passage de Lyroise is intentionally used, as it situates us at the beginning of the 18th century (Nicolas de Fer named it this way in his maps).

We are thus dealing with a sailor from that era.

This sea is known as one of the most challenging maritime zones in Europe, and the piece seeks to express the whims of this child of the Celtic Sea.

 

A short passage from Ocean’s Song, written by the navigator Olivier de Kersauson (Arthaud Editions), vividly conveys the spirit of these waters:

 

“L’Iroise, hé hé, that’s something else. It’s the realm of oil painting. Four seasons in one day. Sharp, violent, clean-cut as with a butcher’s blade. Almost a black like Pierre Soulages’ that makes you shiver. Then, within a quarter of an hour, the sky clears and turns metallic gray. Then again, it frowns and darkens, edged with a golden thread on the horizon.”

 

In Géométrie sonore: spirale, segments, cercles et droite, for cello, viola, violin, bassoon, B-flat clarinet, and C flute, it is the musicality of geometric forms themselves that is played.

Each figure translates into its own sonic logic, where rigor and fluidity coexist, and where visual abstraction becomes musical substance.

 

With Fugue? for solo piano (and also in an Orchestral version, with the addition of timbral counterpoint,

a unique language is explored:

based on the principle of false relations, this fugue presents vertical consonances without belonging to any tonality or modality, creating a state of permanent instability in time.

The piano pieces Entre l’eau et la roche and Réveil sous l’arbre à pluie are written following the same principle.

 

In Le geste et la voix, for solo Cello, he seeks to transcribe the nuances of human speech — breathing, the articulation of noises (through extended techniques) and sounds echoing consonants and vowels, inflections — into a living, expressive music, where the cello plays the musicality of speech itself.

 

Through these projects, a singular path is traced: sound becomes image, image becomes music, and each work becomes a sensitive exploration of the interplay between visual perception and auditory experience.