Mateu Malondra Flaquer
*11 May 1977
Works by Mateu Malondra Flaquer
Biography
Born in Palma/Illes Balears on 11 May 1977; Mateu Malondra Flaquer is a composer, guitarist, researcher, programmer, curator and cultural manager who lives between the Balearic Islands and the United Kingdom.
He has had the fortune of working with musicians such as Arditti String Quartet, Vertixe Sonora, Bcn216, dissonArt, Ensemble Exposé, Insomnio, Mdi Ensemble, Plural Ensemble, Riot Ensemble, Vocalensemble NOVA, UMS’nJIP, Neus Estarellas, Mark Knoop, Takao Hyakutome, Tatsuki Narita, Jan Gerdes, Pilar Fontalba and conductors such as Gerry Cornelius, Beat Furrer, Yasuaki Itakura, Taco Kooistra, Fabián Panisello, Ulrich Pöhl, Roger Redgate, Robert HP Platz, J.M.Sánchez Verdú and Michel Tabachnik.
His music has been performed in such forums as Cairo Contemporary Music Days, Donaueschinger Musiktage-Next Generation, Forum Wallis, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, IMD-47-Internationale Ferienkurse für neuen Musik-OS, Festival Mixtur, Nact der Neuen Musik, NUNC2!, Unerhörte Musik, Sintése, Musikprotokoll-ORF and in such halls as L’Auditori-Barcelona, BKA-Theater Berlin, Concertgebouw Brugge, MISE-EN Place, Muziekcentrum First Philips, Studio Noru, Tokyo Opera City Recital Hall and Spectrum, among others.
Malondra started his composition studies with David Padros and Christian de Jong in Barcelona. In 2004 he moved to Maastricht where he did a BAMus and MMus in composition at ZUYD-Maastricht Conservatory, under Robert HP Platz. He also holds a BAMus in classical guitar performing from Den Haag Royal Conservatoire, under Enno Voorhorst. Malondra developed a PhD research at Kingston University-London, under the guidance of Paul Archbold and Oded Ben-Tal. Prof.Philip Grange and Prof.Roger Redgate awarded him the PhD in 2021. Masterclasses with Richard Barrett, Daniel D'Adamo, Brian Ferneyhough, Beat Furrer and Wolfgang Rihm.
Associate professor at Conservatori Superior de les Illes Balears between 2016 and 2021–Mixed media I-II and electroacoustic composition.
Between 2019 and 2022 he has been the Cultural Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Institut d'Estudis Baleàrics, PC of the Illes Balears public sector. It has been a period where Malondra worked to implement changes in the public structures related to culture, research and innovation. Furthermore, he has been able to contribute to designing the current and future policies for the culture of the Balearic government. Mateu Malondra developed an active role in restructuring the relationships with regional, national and international institutions. Likewise, the situation derived from the COVID health crisis pushed him to be very flexible, resilient and resolutive. During this period, among other partnerships, he developed a collaboration with Martin Matalon, IRCAM and the Balearic Islands Symphony Orchestra.
Mateu Malondra has been the founder, artistic director and coordinator (2013-2019) of the ME_MMIX Festival, co-founder of the non-profit association Placa Base and the ensemble Placa Base Collective.
Recordings: Takao Hyakutome's solo debut CD, at label Chanpd’Action. Tomeu Moll solo debut CD. Vokalensemble NOVA/Musikprotokoll CD-ORF. Netherlands National Radio-4, Concertzender.nl and Relevant Tones-USA broadcasted his music.
Malondra’s music has been performed in Egypt, Europe, Iceland, Japan, México, the UK and the USA.
Recipient of a commission funded by Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung.
About the music
My work focuses on strategies that exploit the relations between independent pieces, modular structures and sonic events as self-contained moments. Multiplicity, modular fragmentation, superposition of various compositional techniques and the concatenation of musical elements are the most characteristic features of my work. Thus, I understand fragmentation not as an end but as an opportunity for new connections within an endless chain. This subject matter framed the sonic event within the idea of a “gestalt”. Moreover, when the fragment becomes an independent unit not dependent on a specific context, it germinates as a signifying referentiality. Consequently, my musical research provides a unified ecosystem of metamorphic musical entities. In this manner, this systemic mutability derived from both the transformation of the unit and the context provides the adequate skeleton where multiplicity and modularity can be understood as a milieu within which the conceptual contradiction inherent in parametrical processual context and momentform are brought together as a whole. The interrelation of non-linear sequential traces is what opens the window for parametric relations in different time scales and moments as polymorphic and polyphonic structures.
New releases
Modular Ob commissioned by Pilar Fontalba (New CD release)
Free Module Study nº2 dedicated to Vertixe Sonora. The creation of this work has received the support of the Institut d'Estudis Baleàrics (IEB)
Modular Pn commissioned by Neus Estarellas
Apposition V dedicated to Takao Hyakutome
Samurai; una escena musical Monodrama (Opera); dramaturgy by Rafa Gallego