Benet Casablancas

7 Haikus

The Seven Haikus, lasting some 8 minutes, were written for the Composers Portrait that closed the author's two-season residency at L'Auditori de Barcelona (2015). The work is inspired by the conciseness and essentiality of theJapanese poetic form, which aspires to capture the epiphanic moment with the immediacy of a calligraphic stroke. The Haikus are compact statements, with an expressive range that belies their miniature timespan. The author conjuresin them a wealth of atmospheres, textures and colors from the ensemble of only six players. For all their reduced scale each piece presents a fully-composed argument. Some are calm, lyrical, others more playful, brilliant andwitty, without excluding the most dramatic or elegiac moods, as in the sixth of the collection, written 'In memoriam Maria del Carme Casablancas'.