A Laugh to Cry

Miguel Azguime, a composer, percussionist, and poet from Portugal, began work at EMPAC with his team on a new multimedia performance piece, A Laugh to Cry, including stereoscopic projection, a small chorus, and several onstage musicians. An evening-length work featuring himself as soloist, the piece was based on a variety of texts in several languages: Gertrude Stein, Antonin Artaud, James Joyce, as well as contemporary Portuguese poets. The work was premiered at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 2013.

Azguime’s previous opera Salt Itinerary toured America, Canada, Europe, and Asia; in its performance he spoke and sung in five languages, and used a combination of real-time algorithmic audio and video. Azguime has composed instrumental and/or vocal works with and without electronics, electroacoustic music, sound poetry, including music for sound installations, theater, exhibitions, dance, and cinema. He also dedicates himself to the promotion of contemporary music as artistic director of the independent label Miso Records and of the Música Viva International Festival.