Gustavo Matamoros
Tone Poem in Surround (2025)
20′ | surround sound, amplified piano, radio transmissions, Morse code and other Audibles
Tone Poem in Surround places language in a field of changing states. It may be written, spoken, transmitted, intercepted, encoded or approached as music. Meaning is neither its destination nor something the work attempts to eliminate. It appears, shifts and sometimes disappears as sounds move through space.
The composition brings together radio speech and interference, Morse code, amplified piano, writing sounds and silence. These materials unfold as Audibles—brief perceptual events carrying evidence of a gesture, source and interaction with the surrounding acoustic space. A word arriving through radio behaves differently from one being written, just as a musical note may also be heard as a syllable. Each remains partly attached to what produced it while becoming available for other associations.
The complete 20-minute work was first presented at CYFEST 16 in Mexico City under the title Sound Poem in Surround. For that realization, the surround composition was joined by live amplified writing and camera projection.
Using markers and other writing implements, I constructed a chart divided into columns identified by language or context: English, Spanish, music, Morse code and radio. I gradually placed phonemes, syllables, words and musical notes within it. Their identities could change according to their location and what appeared beside them. An X under English could meet por—“multiplied by” or “for”—under Spanish. Do, la, si appeared less as musical notes than as written syllables or fragments of words.
The chart was not a text prepared to be recited. It was a working space in which different systems for organizing sound and meaning could encounter one another. Nor did the writing need to be completely legible to the audience. Its construction, physical sound and transformation were part of the performance.
The work was subsequently retitled Tone Poem in Surround. It can also be realized acousmatically, without the live writing and projected image. In either form, the poem does not reside in a continuous text or narrative. It emerges provisionally from relations among sounds—their sources, possible meanings, spatial positions and the circumstances through which they become audible.
LISTEN
Gustavo Matamoros, Tone Poem in Surround (2025). Abbreviated audio version | 5′16″
Edited from the complete 20-minute composition for online listening. Binaural rendering.
Selected Presentations
September 27, 2026 — U.S. premiere
Tone Poem in Surround
Complete acousmatic surround version
Deering Estate Theater
Miami, Florida
September 4, 2025 — world premiere
Presented under the title Sound Poem in Surround
Complete 20-minute composition with live amplified writing and camera projection
CYFEST 16
Centro de Cultura Digital
Mexico City, Mexico