Composing a piece to be premièred in such a distant place from where I wrote it was quite a new experience to me. One wouldn’t expect that such aspect would affect the writing of the work itself but, at some point, I understood that this journey to the other extreme of the world was becoming the main idea for this piece.
Therefore, the work’s structure is clearly divided into two contrasting though connected movements, the first being very dynamic and alive, the second starting in a still and very calm style - developing into a final section that recovers elements from the first movement, gradually blending the two opposites of the work.
Antipode was written for the International Young Composers’ Forum 2000, promoted by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne and UNESCO, and was first performed by Le NEM / Lorraine Vaillancourt in Adelaide, Australia.
(Luís Tinoco, Lisbon, January 2000)