24 Mar 2026
Soundscape | Angélica Salvi
Essayby Angélica Salvi
The work TRANS is conceived for harp and electronics. The starting point is the instrument’s acoustic sound: plucked strings, natural resonances, and harmonics that form the piece’s basic material. From this material, various electronic processes capture and transform the harp’s sound through delays, reverberations, granulations, and spectral modulations.
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The sounds are prolonged, superimposed, or fragmented, generating layers that unfold in space. The development of the work unfolds as a progressive expansion of the sound space. The harp’s resonances multiply and project onto different planes, creating a broad and constantly evolving auditory environment.
The result is a contemplative soundscape, where the combination of harp and electronics suggests a transition into an unknown perceptual space. The transformations of sound generate a sense of openness and displacement, as if the initial material were expanding toward a broader, luminous, and as yet undetermined territory.
The title TRANS refers to the words transparency, transcendence, transition, or transformation. This piece emerged as a follow-up to the work Revelação by the same composer, which featured the collaboration of Alexandre Soares and was part of the exhibition Sacred Manuscripts of Santa Cruz de Coimbra, presented at Alfândega do Porto in February 2025.
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The Soundscape section is coordinated by Fernando José Pereira
BIOGRAPHY
Angélica Salvi is a Spanish harpist and composer who has been based in Porto since 2011. Thanks to her training and international experience, she has built a multifaceted and highly collaborative career. With a dynamic career path, in addition to countless concerts, her work includes various recordings, premieres of new works, multidisciplinary projects, and collaborations with diverse national and international artists, composers, choreographers, and directors. She is dedicated to improvisation, contemporary, and electroacoustic music, exploring various techniques for preparing and amplifying the instrument, as well as extended techniques, always in search of new sonic universes.
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