Performed on 12 June 2025 at the Southbank Centre

 My mother shared her stories drawn from years shaped by addiction, homelessness, and survival. These stories were captured in sonic and written recordings, as she reflected on her journey towards recovery. I was drawn to incorporate these recordings into music and text, using them to amplify the emotions embedded in her experiences.

These stories carry different experiences of violence, portrayed in the piece both explicitly and structurally. Yet, alongside this violence, there is also lightness. My mother recounts her story with humour and ease, even in the most difficult moments, and that lightness is evident in the joyful way she writes and speaks, radiating resilience that is supported by a sense of defiance. 

Later in the piece the setting changes, as the concert hall becomes the vast and elegant Sala São Paulo. Outside its walls, the population of Cracolândia has been displaced, pushed aside to make space for beauty and order. The contrast between what is welcomed in and what is excluded lingers uneasily. 

My mother’s story is just one of many that could be heard in spaces like this. 

A mantra for getting through the day without needing to fix everything at once, Just for today (Só por hoje) reflects on what we often choose not to see, what connects us, and the possibility that listening might change what we hear.

Pablo Martinez  Just for today - World Premiere & LS Commission
Stephanie Lamprea  soprano
Elayce Ismail  director & dramaturg
Gabriella Teychenné  conductor
Tony Simpson  lighting design
Jonathan Green  audio engineer
London Sinfonietta

Peel

(2025) 15'

Performed on 23rd September at the cockpit theatre as part of the Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival.

Peel is a surreal, comedic chamber opera for three singers dressed as bananas, who grapple with their looming fate as they ripen together in a fruit bowl.Their banter, anxieties, and dreams unfold in a tightly woven tragicomedy about life’s absurd impermanence. This short opera is a comic treatment of the search for transcendence, delivered through fruit.

Libretto: Hannah Hayden

Music: Pablo Martinez

Mo: Joseph Hancock

Sunny: Aimee Skye Wilmot

Speck: Amber Dixon

Piano: Tammas Slater

Conductor: Hilay Punnett

Directed by Sophie Deneman

What Now, Mané?

A Sort of Poetry Opera

(2024) 24'

This poignant "poetry opera" follows Zé, a poet tormented by an elusive alter ego, as they wrestle with the futility of creation, the inevitability of death, and the fragile hope of transcendence. Through a kaleidoscope of expressive music, haunting imagery, and evocative dialogue, Zé's alter ego teases, challenges, and ultimately inspires the poet to confront life’s ultimate questions: What does it mean to create? To live? To die completely, leaving no trace or to leave behind something eternal? Both tender and tumultuous, What Now, Mané is a celebration of artistic resilience and the unyielding human desire to carve meaning from chaos.

Performed at the Sainsbury Theatre, Royal Academy of Music. 15 January 2025

Pablo Martinez – Composer and Conductor

Carleigh Ross – Alter ego

Sophie Dean - Zé

Flavio Rodrigues – Accordion

Lisa Archontidi-Tsaldaraki – Violin

Alex Lavine – Cello

Hannah Runting – Harp

Courtney Cousins and Saurabh Shivakumar – Tech

Look @ me 

A collaboration with choreographer Constant Vigier, and composer Joe Strike

(2022) 15'