Continuum XXI
Ensemble Modern
hr-Bigband
hr-Sinfonieorchester
IEMA-Ensemble 2025/26
Synergy Vocals
Trondheim Voices
Alberto Arroyo
Hed Bahack
Sylvain Cambreling
Helena Cánovas Parés
Pia Davila
Caio de Azevedo
Justine Emard
Bernard Foccroulle
Georg Friedrich Haas
John Hollenbeck
Eloain Lovis Hübner
Justė Janulytė
Michael Jarrell
Malika Kishino
Eungjin Lee
Lucie Leguay
Leon Liang
Brad Lubman
Sarah Nemstov
Felicitas Magdalena Pfaus
Julian Prégardien
Steve Reich
Diego Ramos Rodríguez
Rebecca Saunders
Yixie Shen
Miroslav SRNKA
Toby Thatcher
Thierry Tidrow
Stefan Weiller
Adriane Westerbarkey
Haotian Yu
Artist
© Miguel Angel PortillaAlberto Arroyo
Alberto Arroyo is a composer and the artistic director of the ensemble Continuum XXI. He is a docent at the Dresden Academy of Music (where he is a répétiteur for Lisa Fornhammar’s class in the New Music master’s degree) and at the Leipzig Music Academy (performance practice of ancient and new music) as well as holding a doctorate degree in musicology (magna cum laude). His music has been released on several CDs, including a portrait CD on the NEOS label. In 2022, he was composer-in-residence for AuditivVokal Dresden. His first opera, ›ONIROS‹ was premiered in Dresden in 2021, and his second, ›LABRYS‹, at the Hellerau European Centre for the Arts in 2023.
Arroyo is interested in affective aspects of vocal and instrumental music. He is currently developing the basics of an aesthetic together with the philosopher Dr. Friedrich Hausen: ›Affects in the context of transformative experience‹, which offers a new perspective on elements of Ancient Music and implements them. In concrete, he takes the baroque theory of affects as his point of departure in order to develop new compositional expressive options. Affects such as rage, joy or grief are implemented in his music in an ambivalent manner, as all the sonic qualities of a situation (e.g. panic or ecstasy) are systematized and used. His operas ›ONIROS‹ and ›LABRYS‹ are examples for these compositional considerations.
Arroyo’s music is articulated in a characteristic manner: the sound appears as a »meta-instrument«, an acoustic illusion in which various instruments are »camouflaged« in a unit of sound, or heard in fusion. This unfolds over time, as if the sound were a sculpture; in other words, the material and physical element of sound plays a central role.
His interest in innovative formats and instruments has made him undertake artistic research and interdisciplinary projects with artists from other disciplines (literature, prepared bass saxophone with a trumpet mute, new percussion instruments, pieces for historical instruments such as an arciorgano featuring micro-intervals, sculpture, painting, light and spatial dramaturgy).