Dúo Juum, formed by Gabriela Villa (viola and texts) and Hugo Solís (pianos and electronics), is an experimental electroacoustic improvisation duo. It began as a space to explore new sonorities and new ways for the two performers to interact with digital media.
Juum, the Mayan word for noise, gives the duo its aesthetic direction. Since its foundation in Barcelona in early 2006 it has played in Italy, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan and Korea.
The listener who seeks a safe handle in music is confronted, throughout the experience of free improvisation, with a construction that invites active listening. “Music may have died”, but only to liberate sonorous energies: radical sensory experiences that do not yield to the decorative or the hedonic.
Productions
- La nave de los locos (The Ship of Fools, Barcelona, 2006): the first album, a sonic journey through the subjective roads of dream travel. Introito · Equipaje · A bordo · Revés-través · Marea · Zona cero · Altamar · Estribor · El faro · Destino.
- Vértice (2007–2008): an audiovisual experience produced with support from FECAS Sonora and DXARTS, University of Washington.
- Conjuro de la memoria (Conspiracy of Remembrance, 2008): a work for viola, voice, pianos and electronics based on an original poem by Gabriela Villa, extended with dead pianos.
Selected performances
Uno Uno Prima Festival (Parma, 2006) · Sonorities Festival (Belfast, 2007) · SLAM and Chapel Performance Space (Seattle, 2007–2008) · Tokyo Experimental Festival (Tokyo, 2011) · Volta 05 and WhiteNoise (Mexico City, 2011–2012) · Casa del Lago and Ecos Urbanos (2017) · ICMC (Daegu, 2018) · Festival Cultural Zacatecas (2019).
