Episode 93 — March 9, 2021
Richard Boukas: “Coco Pouco Louco” for clarinets
Performed by Louis Arques

Clarinetist Louis Arques first became acquainted with guitarist and composer Richard Boukas while a graduate student at Mannes School of Music at The New School about five years ago. They’d have lunch together once a week, where Boukas would bring new pieces for Arques to learn; eventually, they recorded an album of pieces for clarinet and guitar. In this House Music series video, Arques presents an arrangement of one of Boukas’s works, Coco Pouco Louco. It’s written in the style of Brazilian Coco, which Arques describes as the “OG hip hop battle” due to its conversational nature.

Arques first worked with Metropolis Ensemble in January 2020, at their Ciranda concert, which bridged folk-inspired Nuevo Latino music with New York’s contemporary classical scene. He had just arrived back to New York after a trip to France, and found himself on stage with a group of boundary-pushing musicians. He remembers feeling blown away by the experience as a whole. 

This arrangement of Coco Pouco Louco sees Arques in a fast-paced conversation with himself. Boukas had originally written the piece in May 2020 for guitar and clarinet, but here, Arques has arranged the piece for two clarinets, and he plays both lines. He pats a beat underneath an instantly irresistible melody, eventually uniting the two clarinet melodies into one delicately interwoven pattern to create a toe-tapping musical vignette. The piece was originally written by Boukas in May 2020 for Diálogos Duo, and is dedicated to Jackson do Pandeiro.

Notes by Vanessa Ague

 
House Music: Bite-sized concerts recorded at homes around the world

In 2020-21, we created a weekly video series featuring short-form concerts of newly-commissioned works, supporting 208 artists around the world during the pandemic.