Diego Samper : The Jaguar’s Eye

Courstey of Diego Samper

Wild Symphony is an exploration of sound as essential energy and of the archaic origins of music as invocation and spell, a fundamental music that reclaims our belonging to the natural order in resonance with the breath and pulse of Life.

In Calanoa Natural Reserve, a conservation project deep in the Amazon Forest, professional musicians are invited to share with local indigenous singers and storytellers in long improvisation sessions, listening to the natural music, the Symphony of Life, and responding to it. From the first encounter, a Symphony and a film were created. The second one, The Jaguar’s Eye, is a live performance and audiovisual experience to be projected in full-dome spaces, with a premier happening at the Medellín Planetarium, Colombia, on May 15th, 2024.

Diego Samper, the project’s director and audiovisual designer, has been involved with the Amazon Forest for 5 decades, living and exploring the deep forest. This work synthesizes his life-long search of the Wild.

Musicians First Wild Symphony

Pablo Segundo, Aníbal Samuel, Raimundo Makuna, Enrique Yukuna, Teto Ocampo, Alejandra Ortiz Almunis, Marcus Berg, Juan Camilo Paulhiac, Coque Gamboa, Dominique Vaughan, Gabriel Hernández, El Vergel children’s choir, José Villa Ticuna(director). Marlene Escobar, production.

Musicians The Jaguar’s Eye

Darío Yukuna, Luciano Yukuna, Angélica Ocaina, Moises Criollo, Diana María Restrepo, Gina Sabino, Sandra Parra, Juan Camilo Paulhiac, Cristina Rubio, Luis Torres, Peter Harper. Marlene Escobar, producción

Diego Samper, direction, field recording, audio and video edition.
Marlene Samper, production.
Recorded in the Calanoa Natural Reserve, Colombian Amazon.
Edited in The Rainforest Studio, Gibsons, BC, Canada.

Marlene and Diego Samper have worked extensively on the research and recording of wild soundscapes and the voices of traditional cultures. As a result of this came the CD and book Voces de la Tierra (Voices of the Earth), an exploration of the geography of wild soundscapes in Northern South America, published in 1999. Amazon Chant, 2017, is a sound installation commissioned by the Museum of Anthropology of UBC, a five-hour weaving of voices in seven indigenous languages and soundscapes of diverse regions of the Amazon basin.

Please visit his site here for more information about this project and Diego’s work. Also, Diego’s interview with Arte Realizzata can be found here.