Kenopsia (from the Greek kenosis "emptiness" + opsia "seeing"): The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet. An emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs.
Without its human dimension –like in the lockdown caused by the current pandemic situation around the world–, the city just becomes a cold and bleak scenery. Empty that, instead of expressing its silence, progressively becomes louder, showing little by little its real significance, the rawness of its meaning, the thunderousness of its emotional emptiness.
Composer: Héctor Oltra-García
Dr. Héctor Oltra-García (1976, Alboraia, Valencia - Spain). Composer, conductor and musical researcher. High degree in Composition and Orchestral Conducting specialties, Master in Contemporary Music, and Doctorate cum laude in Music by Universitat Politècnica de València. Dr. Oltra has been developing an intense activity mainly dedicated to current musical languages, elaborated in a multidisciplinary way in the areas of composition, conducting and musical researching.
As composer, he has received numerous commissions and his works have been premiered and featured in diverse international contemporary music festivals in Spain, USA, Romania, Italy, Greece, Poland, Serbia, Russia and Germany. His works has received composition awards and selections: Oïda II - International Contemporary Music Festival of Valencia ENSEMS; Huihuihui Música - I Young Composers Cycle SGAE-Art's XXI; Price Paco Llácer XI - FECOCOVA (Valencia, Spain); Risuonanze 2015 - TKE (Udine, Italy); Vox Novus International Call for Compositions (NY, USA); 25th International Review of Composers (Belgrade, Serbia); Interensemble 2017 (Padua, Italy); Phasma Music Recording (Warsaw, Poland); InEnsemble Just Fest Volume 1.5 (Rostov on Don, Russia); Tage Neuer Musik 2020 (Regensburg, Germany); among others. His music, principally inspired by art, science, literature, philosophy or committed to today's society, features an abstract and non-traditional personal language, giving a primary sonorous role to texture, timbre, colour, gesture, and its suggestive capacity.
Actually he is artistic director and principal conductor of ENSEMBLE SÍNTESIS, chamber group specialized in contemporary music.
As researcher, Dr. Oltra focuses his works and publications on contemporary music, especially in Valencian (Spain).