Gebirgskriegsprojekt / Montain War Project

For many years the phenomena of nature or »wilderness« have determined and influenced the compositional work of the Cuban-American-Austrian composer Jorge E. López. For fifteen years he has lived amongst the Hohe Tauern mountains near Heiligenblut in southern Austria. Previous to this he lived near the wilderness of the US-American mountains. The main themes the composer addresses are, on the one hand, the astonishing and awe-inspiring aspects of nature, and on the other hand the driving forces behind human activity. López continuously employs dream sequences and nightmarish imagery relating these to each other. This recent work, for video projection and pre-recorded orchestra using 8 channel spatialisation, is no exception; here, López examines the Alpine front during the First World War, in and around the Dolomites. The central repertoire of sounds and images for this multi· media work comes from natural and orchestral sounds, mountain imagery and historical film material.