SOAR by Manuel Rocha Iturbide

This was originally a CD created for Graciela’s Iturbide photography book ASOR. It was first released on the mentioned book published by STEIDEL in 2009. The idea came from the photographer; she wanted to make a book with no texts in collaboration with me. Instead of composing specifically for this edition, I decided to make a selection of my electroacoustic works for fixed electronic sounds (tape pieces), not having ever published a CD with them . Iturbide wanted to create an imaginary story about fantastic places and times, and so, I made a parallel story of sound images by means of selecting and ordering these sound works in a precise way.
This publication created a door not only to Iturbide’s imaginary photo world, but also to the photography public, who by buying the book had the opportunity to enter to an unknown realm to them, one that produces images and stories through sounds.
I decided to publish now this album as an independent making, because otherwise the music community would be banished from my own parallel creative path, which is also my history of more than 30 years of composing electroacoustic music.
I thank Nina Holland, an editor of STEIDEL, who undertook Graciela´s original idea with enthusiasm, and to Rose Shoshana, my daughter Camila and my nephews Matias and Diego to whom the book was dedicated.
Finally, the name SOAR is a permutation of Graciela´s book name ASOR (in Spanish AZOR with z means amazed); my own permutation reminds me of the Kabala book, the ZOAR, one of the most important texts of the spiritual and esoteric Jewish tradition.

Manuel Rocha Iturbide is a composer, artist and writer. His creative work comes from different approaches to the sonic phenomena; from pure imagination, programmatic ideas, conceptual art, soundscape and experimentation with different sound objects. His interdisciplinary work has led him to use photography, sculpture, installation, and visual art as a complement of his sonic work.