CD / WEIRD BIRD - Dimitri Arnauts (Belgium)
This small composition for flute and piano is meant as a humoristic take on the age-old musical tradition of imitating or evoking bird songs in music.
This Bird is indeed quite weird, as it escapes soon from the cage of very classical piano harmonies to fly his own way and utter strange chromatic phrases. His feathered friend gone, the piano starts also to get nervous…
This short musical portrait could never have been written or performed without the use of Natalia and prof. Barbara Świątek-Żelazna’s circular breathing technique: the longest phrase in this score is more than 288 consecutive notes long!
ABOUT THE COMPOSER
Born in Brussels, Dimitri ARNAUTS lives near the capital of Belgium. After humanities focused on Ancient Greek and mathematics, and while following violin classes with virtusoso Pr. Juri Braginski, he enjoyed extensive choral practice in the school choir leaded by Egide Vissenaekens, who was founding member of the Brabant Folk Orchestra.
He started his higher education at the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) in 1989 to become an Engineer-Architect. But he discovered, after some years without singing practice, the vocal music of Johann Sebastian Bach through his masterpiece, the Mass in B Minor, performing it several times with the University Choir of the UCL-Clerlande under the direction of Pr. Dr. Philippe Mercier. This experience was for him a milestone: in 1994 he abandoned his architecture and engineering plans, and started as an autodidact to practice music writing. He developed in parallel a career of graphic- and web designer.
After a brief participation in the Choir and Orchestra Aurora Nova leaded by Stéphane Feye, he embarked on a fantastic journey with the Choir of the Chapelle des Minimes in Brussels: singing 2 Bach cantatas each month during six years, under the skillful direction of Jacques Vanherenthals and Julius Stenzel mainly.
His first concert contribution as a composer occurred in June 2012, when an excerpt of his tone setting of Psalm 100 was performed by the Choir and Orchestra of the Chapelle des Minimes in Brussels, under the direction of J.Stenzel, and was welcomed very favorably by the audience. From 2004 on he wrote numerous works of various sizes and settings, being mainly cantatas, oratorios, passions, concerti, psalms, chamber music and symphonic poems.
In 2018, Dimitri’s compositions have been created in Duisburg, Belgium (Requiem Sanctis Michaelis, February 2018), and his piano suite Humble Memories for straight-strung piano will be premiered in BOZAR Brussels (May 2018). His new Oratorio for the Poor, Break your Bread with the Hungry, will be premiered later on in 2020 (location to be confirmed).