ONCEIM PLAYS STEPHEN O'MALLEY / FRANÇOIS J. BONNET - GRUIDÉS / ORBES
STEPHEN O'MALLEY FOCUS
Museum Auditorium
29 NOV 2026 | 6:30 PM

Ticket: €13.00
Friends of Serralves, Students, Young People (12-18 years old) and Over 65s: €9.00

Since its foundation fifteen years ago, Onceim (Orchestra of New Creations, Experimentations and Improvised Music) has worked alongside contemporary artists and composers to create new sonic landscapes and new ways of inhabiting them collectively. Guided by a deeply collaborative mode of operation, thirty-five outstanding musicians engage in ever-evolving dialogues and working processes, continuously rethinking the relationship between listening and the score. Both a laboratory and a toolbox, Onceim is a space for exchange, conversation and exploration, where composition and improvisation constantly respond to one another.

STEPHEN O'MALLEY
"GRUIDÉS" (2014), 35’

At the beginning of 2014, O'Malley was invited by pianist and composer Frédéric Blondy to write a work for the ONCEIM orchestra.
Understandably intimidated by the prospect, but encouraged to approach the challenge with a “simply punk rock” attitude, the exceptionally talented composer conceived a long-duration drone piece that is technically demanding, at least for the musicians, and deeply rewarding, centred on harmonic experimentation and the study of overtones.
Throughout its 35 minutes, "Gruidés" requires musicians to sustain notes for several minutes at a time (already difficult enough for string players and a true endurance feat for wind instruments), producing shifting spectra of dissonance, torn apart by clusters of gliding sounds and luminous geometries, punctuated by thunderous percussion reminiscent of that used in sunn o)))'s 2014 collaboration with Scott Walker.

FRANÇOIS J. BONNET
"ORBES" (2025), 40’

Orbes is a work conceived as a succession of a finite number of indivisible elements, referred to as “orbs”. Each orb may be approached as a set forming a sequence or a section of the work, but also as something that exists independently, in its own right, as a “moment” or trajectory.
The piece takes the form of a continuous unfolding within the interpolar space of the orbs, gradually moving from one to the next. The order in which the orbs are traversed is neither fixed nor predetermined by the composer. Instead, the choice is left to the conductor, who determines the sequence of orbs for each performance.
Each time the piece is performed according to a specific sequence, that sequence is recorded and may never be used again. To date, the work envisages the creation of seven different orbs, allowing for 5,040 distinct combinations.
"Orbes" is inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost. In this epic poem, Satan rises from Hell and primordial chaos to seek revenge and corrupt humankind in its infancy. During his journey, he crosses an almost abstract universe, a daylight realm made up of orbiting spheres (planets). It is this contrast between a barely sketched celestial vault, a universe outlined in essential strokes, and a transformative will, that of the vengeful demon, which serves as the primum movens of the work