Sound and music reach us through the air, from all directions. They travel in straight lines, but bounce off objects and return, overlapping, cancelling each other out, and interacting. From stereo to multi-channel systems, attempts have long been made to create a sonic universe as expansive as possible, where we lose ourselves in its waves and refractions, in an extreme effort to represent the complexity of the environment around us. In this 2026 edition, Semibreve is creating, for the first time, an octophonic sound environment, in which, over the course of multiple sessions, we will present a selection of sound pieces composed for multichannel systems. In the beautiful main hall of the Nogueira da Silva Museum, four pieces by renowned contemporary composers will showcase the richness of their ideas as the voices of the sound space itself multiply.

Jana Irmert
“Portals” (2024; 16’)

Commissioned by INA GRM

“Portals” is based on recordings made by Jana Irmert in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil and Colombia. However, what we hear does not come from the sounds we might expect from a visit to this tropical ecosystem, but rather from those that usually escape our notice: the ultrasonic sounds of insects, bats, and amphibians, or an entire symphony of waterways captured by hydrophones. By transposing these recordings into the audible spectrum, Irmert constructs a composition, originally conceived for 36 loudspeakers, in which the forest emerges, surprisingly, as a world parallel to our own, with living beings engaged in intoxicating communication with one another, revealing another layer of life that splendidly ignores us.

Sarah Davachi
“Basse Brevis” (2024; 18’)

Commissioned by INA GRM

Premiered at the 2024 Présences festival in Paris, dedicated to Steve Reich, “Basse Brevis” is Sarah Davachi’s tribute to the American composer. Recorded in Los Angeles with an electric organ, synthesizer, and mellotron, the piece oscillates between formal exploration and moments of pure emotion, revealing, over the course of just under 20 minutes, how the musical worlds of both composers are subtly intertwined in time and space.

BJ Nilsen
“Scalar Towers” (2026; 25’)

Co-commissioned by Sonic Acts e INA GRM

Starting with recordings made at two architectural structures (a water tower in Radio Kootwijk and a silo in Friesland, both located in the Netherlands), BJ Nilsen has conducted an investigation into vertical acoustics: how sound moves and transforms within buildings that channel resonances rather than dispersing them. “Scalar Towers” is an immersive and meticulous piece, and yet another fantastic sonic cartography by this Swedish artist, whose career now spans three decades.

Maria W. Horn
“All Solids Melt Into Aether” (2025; 20’)

Commissioned by INA GRM

“All Solids Melt Into Aether” draws on recordings of the Liardon/Felsberg organ, installed in a church in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, and tuned in 1/4 comma meantone temperament. When the pedal is pressed, the bellows produce a descending glissando at the end of each note as the air pressure decreases. Maria W. Horn combines these sounds with electronic music and algorithmic composition, generating pitches that are at times extremely stable and at other times calculatedly unstable, offering us insight into harmonic balance, and its collapse.