Vuduvum Vadavã, born in Portugal, is Marta Ângela, who, together with João Artur, is part of the duo Von Calhau! Her passion lies in the absurd, in the wild and primitive state of language, from the pre-verbal to the palindrome. In the visual and non-visual arts, in vocal performances, circuit-bending, or as a DJ, Vuduvum Vadavã experiments with noise and silence in a process driven by the unknown. Her investigations focus on opposites which, when combined, can be either complementary or antithetical. Recent collaborators include Diana Policarpo, Mattin, Kaffe Matthews, Angélica Salvi, Ece Canli, and Limpe Fuchs. She currently lives in Lisbon.
Ece Canlı is a musician, artist and researcher whose work is situated at the intersection of body politics, extralinguistic expression and extended vocal techniques as a means of exploring the limits and possibilities of the (sounding) body to re-articulate marginalized narratives. Her tools of investigation include the voice & electronics, performance, text and artifacts. In addition to her solo work, she collaborates as a composer and improviser with artists, musicians and choreographers internationally and produces texts and sound for performances, exhibitions and videos. She holds a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and is currently a researcher at the University of Minho (CECS). In November 2020, she released her solo debut album »Vox Flora, Vox Fauna« and continues to create performances for the stage in collaboration (e.g. Cobracoral, Nooito, Live Low) and as a soloist.
Angélica Salvi is a Spanish harpist and composer who has been based in Porto since 2011. Her extensive artistic career includes collaborations with composers such as Takayuki Ray and Heiner Goebbels and improvising musicians such as Butch Morris and Evan Parker. After graduating from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, Salvi continued her studies at the University of Arizona (USA) and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague (Netherlands). As a professional harpist, she has collaborated with symphony orchestras and ensembles from all over the world. Over the course of the past 10 years, she has immersed herself in the world of live electronics. As a founding member of FMFX (Female Effects Collective), Salvi has created multidisciplinary projects such as »Harpoemacto« and »Invisible Landscapes«. She is currently the principal harp teacher at the Conservatory of Music in Porto.
Lorena Izquierdo is a vocalist, performer and poet. Her work is characterized by the interweaving of different media and the unusual relationship she establishes with everyday objects. She is co-director of Diàleg Obert, a platform that has been promoting performance art and experimental music for the last ten years.
Alessandra Eramo is a sound artist and vocalist whose work explores the latent acoustic territories of the human voice and noise as sociopolitical material. She was trained in classical singing and studied Fine Arts and Performance in Milan, Stuttgart, and Venice.
Ute Wassermann’s otherworldly singing transcends the human voice, producing multidimensional, sculptural sounds that oscillate between electronic, animalistic, inorganic and human qualities. Sound environments are an important source for her imagination and her methods include the use of bird whistles, lo-fi electronics, resonators, field recordings and a variety of microphones.
Anna Clementi is a performer and vocal acrobat. With her ability to combine language(s), voice, dance and acting, Clementi is regarded as an outstanding interpreter of contemporary music. Her repertoire includes an exceptionally broad range of musical genres.
Catherine Lorent, born in Munich, is a Luxembourgish artist who combines visual art with music and performance. She experiments with a number of instruments, including electric guitar, drums, bass, piano, harmonium, and voice, while pursuing her music projects Gran Horno and Hannelore (with Tom Früchtl). She first studied painting at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe and went on to study history and art history. In 2012 she graduated with a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Luxembourg. Lorent, who has exhibited extensively in Europe, was nominated for the 2011 Robert Schuman Prize in Luxembourg and won the Prix Grand-Duc Adolphe in 2022. She lives and works in Berlin.
Maya Shenfeld is a Jerusalem-born composer and musician. In her practice, she explores the intersection between modes of musical production used in popular, electronic, and experimental music. Her work encompasses electroacoustic compositions, sound installations, and orchestral pieces, as well as pieces for classical guitar and solo live electronic sets. Shenfeld is a graduate of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and the Berlin University of the Arts, where she completed an MA in classical guitar and contemporary music composition. She has presented commissioned work internationally, including performances at Frequenz Festival in Kiel, Loop Festival in Los Angeles and Berlin, and Northwestern University in Chicago. She is the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships from institutions including GEMA, the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, and the DAAD. She lives in Berlin.
Founded in Munich in 2020, guitarduo:santorsa~pereyra sees itself as a »band for contemporary music«, and has played concerts throughout Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. The duo involves electronic and acoustic instruments and is characterized by a particularly unique and innovative sound. A central focus in their work is placed on close collaboration with composers of the youngest generation who are distinguished by the broad spectrum in their works. Both musicians are specialists in the field of contemporary music and are also very familiar with electronic music and improvisation. guitarduo:santorsa~pereyra was awarded a grant from the city of Munich in 2020 for the project »so nah ~ so fern«.
Ann Cleare is an Irish artist working in the areas of concert music, opera, extended sonic environments, and hybrid instrumental design. Her work explores the static and sculptural nature of sound, probing the extremities of timbre, texture, color, and form. Ann studied at University College Cork, IRCAM, and holds a PhD from Harvard University. In October 2019, she received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland for her contribution to music. A recipient of a 2019 Ernst von Siemens Composers’ Prize, her work has been commissioned and presented by major broadcasters such as the BBC, ORF, SWR, and WDR for festivals such as Gaudeamus Festival and the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik.
Katherine Young is a composer and bassoonist from the USA. She uses expressive noises, curious timbres, and kinetic structures in her electroacoustic music and sonic art. Collaboration – and surprise! – are central to her practice. Her music has been commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, and others. She performs regularly as a soloist in ad hoc improvised groups and with projects such as Beautifulish (duo with Sam Scranton) and Architeuthis Walks on Land (duo with Amy Cimini). Katherine Young’s work as a bassoonist and improviser is documented on numerous recordings. She teaches at Emory University in Atlanta GA, USA, and was Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition in 2021.
Yoko Konishi is a Japanese mixed music composer and multimedia artist. She is particularly curious about human perception and spatial movement and also puts emphasis on more sensitive spaces and connections between gestures and instruments/objects. She often draws inspiration from intricate electronic sounds she has created and strives to recreate them through acoustic and cross-modal approaches. She was awarded prizes in lyrical singing and composition at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and graduated with a master’s degree from Université Paris 8. Her works have been performed at festivals throughout Europe such as the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Acht Brücken Festival.
Alejandra Cárdenas aka Ale Hop, born in Peru, is an artist and experimental instrumentalist. In her live performances, she builds sonic layers of physical intensity, bringing forth a diverse repertoire of extended techniques for electric guitar combined with real-time sampling devices. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and a Master’s degree in Sound Studies, completed further studies in the History of Science and Technology, and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the Berlin University of the Arts. She co-founded the Berlin-based festival Radical Sounds Latin America and now directs the publication Border-Listening/Escucha-liminal and the editorial platform Contingent Sounds, which facilitates critical discourse and artistic research on listening. Ale Hop’s work has been performed, screened, and exhibited at institutions and festivals worldwide.
Chra is the artist name of Viennese producer, DJ, author, and radio/TV presenter Christina Nemec, who has been active since the 1980s as a musician in both the metal/noise and experimental electronic scenes. After a period of experimenting with low frequencies and sound effects, Chra began working with sine waves, which she processed with tape recorders and other tools to reference landscapes, silences, and extreme situations. She released several solo albums on the renowned label Editions Mego. Chra is part of the female:pressure network and runs her own queer and feminist music label comfortzone. In 2019, Chra was awarded the Prize of the City of Vienna for Music.
Mieko Suzuki, born in Japan, deals with time and space as her source material. In highly unconventional sound performances, for which she uses drones and field recordings, the crackling of electrical circuits, and fragments of vinyl records, Mieko Suzuki always goes for the unexpected. She couples the raw power of sound with the tenderness of subtle modulations and turns any space into a playground for sonic adventures. Choreographer Meg Stuart, theater director Johan Simons, and avant-garde techno label Raster are among her regular creative collaborators. She also performs on turntables as part of the trio Contagious. Since 2009 Mieko Suzuki has collaborated with Arno Raffeiner in organizing the multidisciplinary event Kookoo at OHM Gallery in Berlin and has been active in several dance and theater productions. She lives in Berlin.
for contrabass clarinet, contrabass, live electronics and sub-bass frequencies (2023, WP) commissioned by Heroines of Sound Saturday 8 July, 2023, 23.00 See day program >
Stefanie Egedy is a composer of conceptual pieces and electronic music, and investigates sound in both installations and live performances. She is focused on researching the potential of low-frequency sound, bodies, and subwoofers— including bass, sub-bass, and infrasound—and their spatial presence. Egedy co-runs the label COISAS QUE MATAM (THINGS THAT KILL), researches light-sound relations with Camille Laurent, and worked with Chris Salter on his latest spatial production. She has worked with and exhibited in Berlin at CTM Festival, Berghain, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art as well as at Harvard University in Massachusetts, Kunstfest in Weimar, and Zentrale in Vienna. Egedy is part of Creative Europe’s SHAPE+ artist roster for 2022-2023.
Merche Blasco is a Spanish-born multimedia artist and composer based in New York and currently living in Berlin. She designs and builds imprecise technological assemblages that catalyze embodied forms of live electroacoustic composition and new modes of listening. Through her constructed devices, Blasco attempts to distance herself from parameters of precision, power, and control. As an alternative form of performance, she engineers collaborative spaces with instruments that are given their own agency. In her compositions, her body and the live exploration of organic materials are central elements. She has presented her works at institutions and events such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, La Biennale di Venezia, the NIME conferences, and the Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art. Merche Blasco is currently a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.
Susanne Kirchmayr aka Electric Indigo has been active as a DJ, composer, and musician since 1989. As a techno DJ and music producer, she transforms highly abstract dance music into electronic music, which emerges from techno to attain very similar results to academic electronic music. In the 1990s she worked at the legendary Hardwax record store in Berlin. In 1998 she founded the female:pressure network, which was awarded an honorary mention at the Prix Ars Electronica in 2009. As a composer, she received the »outstanding artist award« at the Prix Ars Electronica in 2012 and the Austrian State Scholarship for Composition from the BMUKK in 2013. The artist received composition commissions for Wien Modern and Heroines of Sound, among others. In 2016 she led a workshop on granular synthesis at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.
Jasmine Guffond is an artist and composer working at the interface of social, political, and technical infrastructures. Her practice spans live performance, recording, sound installation, and custom-made browser plug-ins. Through the sonification of data, she addresses the potential for sound to engage with contemporary political questions. Recent projects have employed digital technologies, sonification, and the aestheticization of data as a means of fostering discussion around contemporary surveillance technologies. Guffond’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale and the Chicago Architecture Biennale. She has performed internationally at numerous electronic music and art festivals, including the opening of the CTM Festival in 2020. In 2021 she completed her Ph.D. at the University of New South Wales in Australia. She currently lives in Berlin.
Pascale Criton, born in Paris, studied composition with Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Gérard Grisey, and Jean-Etienne Marie. She underwent training in electroacoustic music at CIRM – International Centre for Musical Research in Nice, completed the musical computing course for composers at IRCAM in Paris, and holds a doctorate in music and musicology of the 20th century. In her music, she explores the fine details of sonic variation; a specialist in microtonality, she uses specific tunings and computer programs to bring subtle acoustic effects and spatial listening into focus. Her music has been performed at renowned international festivals such as documenta 14 in Kassel and Frequency Festival in Chicago. She has worked closely with music research studios such as INA’s Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris and GMEM in Marseille. Her CD »Infra« (2017) was awarded the Charles Cros Prize.
Marina Khorkova, born in Russia, studied composition at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the State University of Music and the Performing Arts Stuttgart. In addition to scholarships from the Paul Sacher Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, and Akademie Schloss Solitude, her works have been awarded the Ernst Krenek Prize (Impuls Festival, Graz) and the Staubach Honorarium (Darmstädter Ferienkurse). In 2016, her WERGO portrait CD »klangnarbe« was produced by Deutscher Musikrat and Deutschlandfunk. Her works have been performed at such international festivals as the reMusik in Saint Petersburg and MicroFest in Los Angeles. Marina Khorkova lives and works in Berlin.
Theo Nabicht, bass- and contrabass clarinet Seth Josel, electric guitar Theodor Flindell, violin Kirstin Maria Pientka, viola Cosima Gerhardt, violoncello Jonathan Heilbron, double bass
Since its founding in 1988, Ensemble KNM Berlin has presented programs throughout the world that reflect a curiosity to explore the unknown and a willingness to confront the most pressing themes of our times. The ensemble presents compositions, installations, and concert projects created in close cooperation with composers and has earned an international reputation with repeated guest appearances at important music festivals as well as with its own productions. Since 2014, KNM Berlin has been increasingly committed to multi-perspective musical networking through intercultural collaborations worldwide. KNM was awarded the German Record Critics’ Prize in 2021, 2009 and 2010 for its collaboration with the composer Beat Furrer.
Composer Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttirfollows an inner logic when approaching composition, often integrating sound with other sensory perceptions to create mutable, breathing, living structures through experimental performance practices and notation. Snæbjörnsdóttir studied composition at Mills College in the USA as a student of Pauline Oliveros, Roscoe Mitchell and Fred Frith. As a performer, she has toured with artists such as Sigur Rós and Björk. Her work has been commissioned and performed widely and she is the recipient of awards and support from the Icelandic Centre for Research, the Jerome Foundation, and the National Sawdust Hildegard Award. Snæbjörnsdóttir has been Assistant Professor of Composition at the Iceland University of the Arts in Reykjavík since 2022.
Kirsten Reese grew up in Hong Kong, the Philippines and the Rhineland and studied flute and electronic composition in Berlin and New York. As a composer and sound artist, she creates works for electronic media, instruments and unusual perceptual situations and spaces. Her research intense projects combine historical themes and archival recordings with field recordings and immersive soundscapes. She was guest artist at the ZKM in 2011 and the Villa Aurora in 2009. Her works have been performed internationally, including at the MIBEM Festival in Melbourne, the Borealis Festival in Bergen and the Donaueschingen Musiktage. Kirsten Reese is a member of the Akademie der Künste and teaches electroacoustic composition at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Monika Szpyrka, born in Kraków, studied composition and music theory at the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków and completed the soloist program at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus under the direction of Juliana Hodkinson, Niels Rønsholdt, and Simon Steen-Andersen. A fundamental feature of her style is the amalgamation of instrumental and electronic sounds. Szpyrka’s works have been performed at international festivals including Musica Electronica Nova, Warsaw Autumn and the Darmstadt Summer Courses. She received a fellowship for outstanding students from the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2017), as well as the Sapere Auso scholarship (2017/18). She is currently enrolled in the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) program at the Academy of Music in Kraków.
Tine SurelLange is a composer and interdisciplinary artist. Her art takes form as experimental instrumental and electroacoustic compositions, installations, performances, and audiovisual works. Her works, inspired by the northern Norwegian landscape, are always rooted in organic material, questioning the perception of our sound world and how our own expectations form and allow it to be read. Surel Lange’s works have been presented in Europe, North America, and Asia. She has created electroacoustic compositions at institutions such as CCRMA, the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in the USA and EMS in Sweden. She lives and works in Flakstad, Norway.
Stepha Schweiger is an avant-garde composer, pianist/keyboardist and singer/songwriter of experimental music. In the 1980s she was active in the New Wave, later in new music. Her music moves between minimal, experimental, industrial, free jazz and song. She studied musicology, philosophy and linguistics in Regensburg, composition at the Berlin University of the Arts with Walter Zimmermann and Gösta Neuwirth. Among other influences, Schweiger’s compositional concept is inspired by spectral music. Her work »ver.blich«, which she created at IRCAM Paris in 2001, was premiered in a new version at the musikprotokoll of the Steirischer Herbst Graz in 2018. Stepha Schweiger performs widely on important concert stages throughout the world and lives in Berlin.
Martyna Poznańska is an interdisciplinary artist who works with different media across genres. A special focus of her work is on field recordings that represents an ongoing investigation of visual tools such as video, her own body, drawings, or text. After completing a master’s degree in Spanish language and literature, Poznańska studied sound art at the University of the Arts in London. In 2016 she obtained an MA in Sound Studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Her works have been presented in exhibitions worldwide, including the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, the Unsound Festival in Kraków (PL) and the SPOR Festival (DK). In 2013 she received a scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture. Martyna Poznańska currently lives and works in Berlin and Białystok. martynapoznanska.com vimeo.com/martynapoznanska martinska.bandcamp.com
Beatriz Ferreyra is a pioneer of electroacoustic and acousmatic music born in Argentina and based in France since 1961. She studied with Nadia Boulanger and Earle Brown and spent much of her time during the 60s at the GRM — Groupe de Recherches Musicales — as a close collaborator of Pierre Schaeffer. From 1975 she was a member of the Collège des Compositeurs of the Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges. Her extensive oeuvre continues to be presented at festivals throughout the world. Since 2014, Ferreyra has been an honorary member of CIME/ICEM, the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music. In 2015, her GRM work was released through Recollection GRM in collaboration with the Viennese label Editions Mego and the juxtaposition of archival recordings with recent compositions revealed a remarkable continuity and clarity of her artistic vision.
Contagious convincingly combines avant-garde experimentation and electronic music. The trio was founded by Mieko Suzuki, an experienced DJ and musician, and two innovative voices of the Berlin improvisation scene: Andrea Neumann and Sabine Ercklentz. Their intense and powerful sounds move within a structure of spontaneous composition and improvisation. Andrea Neumann occasionally sends feedback processes from her self-developed inside piano to Mieko Suzuki’s processing rig, which uses her own pre-recorded sounds and turntable skills, while Sabine Ercklentz’s trumpet sounds shoot through the same processing system. Together, the three musicians communicate through compositional logic and futuristic structures where fragile sonic textures and impulses become monumental.
Black Page Orchestra, founded in Vienna in 2014, is an ensemble for radical and uncompromising music of our time. The name derives from Frank Zappa’s composition »The Black Page«, the score of which, due to the high density of notes and musical events, results in an almost completely black piece of paper. Alongside this aesthetic language the ensemble focuses on works using electronics, video and various new technologies in an artistic context as well as compositions with a performative character that reach far beyond a conventional classical concert situation. Experimental and multifaceted programming is a fundamental concern of the collective. Their repertoire includes works by Peter Ablinger, Alessandro Baticci and Sara Glojnarić. The ensemble has performed at festivals such as Ultraschall Berlin, Wien Modern and Warsaw Autumn.
Billy Roisz is a musician and filmmaker based in Vienna. Self-taught, Billy Roisz sees her creative roots in the extremely open DIY environment of the digital and analog electronic and noise music scene in Vienna at the Y2K turning point (phonotaktik, rhiz, mego etc.). She has been working with video and sound since 1998. The aesthetics of image and sound glitches, such as feedback and distortion, is one of her central fields of experimentation. Billy Roisz’s works have been presented at numerous festivals and museums, including the Biennale São Paulo, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Tate Modern, and Centre Pompidou. Her brand new solo recording »bajo« has been released as a 12-inch vinyl. Roisz has received numerous awards including the 2021 Austrian Art Prize in the category of film art. She lives in Vienna and became a member of the Vienna Secession in 2022.
Born in Vienna, Eva Reiter studied recorder and viola da gamba with a focus on composition at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam’s Sweelinck Academy. Currently, she is actively involved in performing both as a soloist and together with various baroque orchestras (Trio Unidas, Le Badinage) and ensembles for contemporary music. She has been a permanent member of Ictus Ensemble since 2015. Among other awards, she has received the Publicity Price of SKE, a fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, and the Erste Bank Composition Prize 2016 and has presented her compositions at various international festivals including Transit in Leuven, Ars Musica in Brussels and MaerzMusik in Berlin. She lives as a freelance artist in Vienna.
Rojin Sharafi is a sound artist, performer and composer of acoustic and electronic music that freely crosses the borders between genres. She creates entirely unique musical textures through the use of analog, acoustic and augmented instruments, as well as with digital tools of her own design. Sharafi has worked with a wide range of collaborators and taken part in numerous co-productions in film and dance. Her work has been presented at festivals and venues throughout the world. She is a SHAPE 2020 artist and recipient of the 2018 Austrian Women Composers prize. Rojin Sharafi is currently pursuing her masters in sound engineering and composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna where she is intensively engaged with digital music performance.
Elisabeth Schimana is one of the pioneers of electronic music in Austria and the founder of the IMA Institute for Media Archaeology, which is dedicated to analog and digital media focusing on productions by women. After training as a singer, Schimana studied composition, computer music, musicology and ethnology. Her works, situated at the nexus between composition and free improvisation, explore questions of space, communication, or the body in its absence, as well as the mediation of compositional concepts. In interdisciplinary projects, sound installations and radio works, experiments in social as well as virtual space, projects in the techno context and live compositions, she has been developing and processing projects field by field since the 1980s.
Maja Bosnić is a composer and performer from Belgrade. She is drawn to impossible missions, absurd solutions and uncertain outcomes. She writes pieces for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra as well as for electronics and smart phones in interactive settings. She has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and commissions and her works have been performed at festivals throughout Europe including Impuls, Musikprotokoll, CTM and the Darmstadt Summer Courses. She obtained a PhD degree in music composition at Goldsmiths, University of London (UK), and is currently working as Assistant Lecturer in Composition at the University of Arts in Belgrade. Since 2010 she has been organizing and curating contemporary music projects, concerts and lecture series for the Zabuna Association, an organization she founded to support and develop the contemporary music scene in Belgrade.
The last evening of the festival concludes with a performance by Ale Hop and Laura Robles for E-guitar and cajón, a drum-like, Afro-Peruvian instrument, joined by dancer Liza Alpízar Aguilar. The Peruvian musicians Laura Robles and Alejandra Cárdenas (aka Ale Hop) – both based in Berlin – have long followed experimental approaches in their music and in various art formats. Their performance »Agua Dulce« (Sweet Water) is named for a popular beach in the district of Chorrillos (in Lima) where both Robles and Cárdenas spent time during their youth. Here – only a few houses away, yet without knowing one another – was where the two developed their musical world of experience. Their performance is also influenced by the Peruvian coast: as a point of departure, the two artists use »Afro-Peruvian Rhythms«, a catch-all term for the different musical developments of the last two centuries on the Pacific Coast. Together, the artists explore new sounds and rhythms with Robles’ hybrid Cajon for electronic and acoustic sounds, which Cárdenas, in turn, transforms with electronic effects and synthesis modules.
Liza Alpízar Aguilar has lived and worked in Berlin for 16 years, performing, creating, teaching and collaborating with choreographers, artists, musicians and film artists. Since 2006 she has been performing with SashaWaltz & Guests and touring with other companies such as: TanzCompagnie Rubato, MAU Company and her own pieces such as »Aquel día, cual día?«, »Child of Light«, »Tanz, Cello, Bach«, »Sand« und »Unentrinnbar«. Futhermore she organizes the Berlin based Ibero-American Dancefestival Plataforma. She is an active dancer/performer and yoga teacher (RYT 500+hours) with her own dance movement curiosity experience and meditation. She is constantly searching for ways to know ourselves better and love who we are as we are today. https://www.instagram.com/lizaalpizaraguilar/
The Peruvian musicians Laura Robles and Alejandra Cárdenas (aka Ale Hop) – both based in Berlin – have long followed experimental approaches in their music and in various art formats. Their performance »Agua Dulce« (Sweet Water) is named for a popular beach in the district of Chorrillos (in Lima) where both Robles and Cárdenas spent time during their youth. Here – only a few houses away, yet without knowing one another – was where the two developed their musical world of experience. Their performance is also influenced by the Peruvian coast: as a point of departure, the two artists use »Afro-Peruvian Rhythms«, a catch-all term for the different musical developments of the last two centuries on the Pacific Coast. Together, the artists explore new sounds and rhythms with Robles’ hybrid Cajon for electronic and acoustic sounds, which Cárdenas, in turn, transforms with electronic effects and synthesis modules.
Laura Robles (*1981, Eswatini in Africa) is a composer and percussionist who was raised in Lima, Peru where she had access to the rich Afro-Peruvian musical tradition at a young age. She is widely regarded as an important player of the cajón, a box-shaped percussion instrument originally developed by slaves from West Africa. Robles founded several bands, including El Astrocombo and Stretch it to The Limit, as well as the social education initiative Parió Paula. In addition, she performs with theater and dance companies as well as with renowned folklore, jazz and rock musicians both in Peru and at international festivals. In 2012 she moved to Berlin and founded the Berlin version of her Astrocombo Band, which won the Studio Prize of the City of Berlin in 2014. soniq-music.com/laura-robles
The Peruvian musicians Laura Robles and Alejandra Cárdenas (aka Ale Hop) – both based in Berlin – have long followed experimental approaches in their music and in various art formats. Their performance »Agua Dulce« (Sweet Water) is named for a popular beach in the district of Chorrillos (in Lima) where both Robles and Cárdenas spent time during their youth. Here – only a few houses away, yet without knowing one another – was where the two developed their musical world of experience. Their performance is also influenced by the Peruvian coast: as a point of departure, the two artists use »Afro-Peruvian Rhythms«, a catch-all term for the different musical developments of the last two centuries on the Pacific Coast. Together, the artists explore new sounds and rhythms with Robles’ hybrid Cajon for electronic and acoustic sounds, which Cárdenas, in turn, transforms with electronic effects and synthesis modules.
Alejandra Cardenas aka Ale Hop (born in Peru) is an artist, researcher and experimental instrumentalist. In her complex pop arrangements and contemporary electronic music – characterized as »omnivorous pop experimentalism« (The Wire Magazine) – she utilizes a diverse repertoire of extended techniques for electric guitar and real-time sampling devices. Ale Hop’s solo career began with a Red Bull Music Academy residency and a performance at the London platform Boiler Room. Since then, she has performed at festivals including CTM in Berlin and NRMAL in Mexico City, and presented her work at exhibitions and concerts worldwide. She holds a degree in sound studies and studied the history and theory of science and technology. She lives in Berlin and is currently working on the topic of Artificial Intelligence for her PhD dissertation. alehophop.com
AGUA DULCE Laura Robles & Ale Hop – Performance cajón/percussion, electric guitar, electronics (2022, WP)
Since its founding in 1988, the Ensemble KNM BERLIN has presented programs throughout the world that reflect a curiosity to explore the unknown and a willingness to confront the most pressing themes of our times. The ensemble presents compositions, concert installations, and concert projects created in close cooperation with composers, authors, conductors, artists, and stage directors from around the world. Since 2014, KNM Berlin has been increasingly committed to musical, multi-perspective networking with intercultural collaborations worldwide. KNM Berlin has earned an international reputation both with its own productions as well as in repeat guest appearances at important music festivals. KNM was awarded the German Record Critics’ Award in March 2009 and 2010 for its collaboration with the composer Beat Furrer. www.kammerensemble.de
Macri Cáceres, born in Lima, Peru and member of RETAMA, is a performer, composer, improviser and builder of ceramic flutes. Her research into the sonic possibilities of ceramic flutes has led her to harmonic exploration during the construction process and an investigation into the creative possibilities of composition and collaboration with other artists and disciplines, most recently at Donaueschingen Global 2021. She studied music and composition at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC) and was awarded the diploma in sound creation with new technologies from the Mexican Center for Music and Sonic Arts (CMMAS). She is currently a fellow at Postcolonial Recherche, a project of Ensemble Recherche. soundcloud.com/macricaceres
»Anonymous Orchids« is based on two poems by the feminist Peruvian poet Violeta Barrientos and describes two moments in particular. The first moment is about loneliness and introspection, while the second reflects upon the fight against gender-specific violence.
Yemit Ledesma holds a bachelor’s degree in music composition from the National University of Music in Peru and a master’s degree in composition with new technologies from the International University of La Rioja in Spain. A special aspect of her works is their link to important characters, legends, and gods of ancient cultures, in addition to using music as a descriptive and narrative language. Her work has been performed at various festivals and has been released on albums including TIERRA: Acousmatic Works of Women Composers of the UNM (2022). Since 2018, she has been professor of composition of the National University of Music in Peru. soundcloud.com/yemitledesma
»Devil Curve« refers to three graffiti that grapple with the ›Baguazo‹ conflict of 2009 in Peru. This confrontation between the police and the indiginous populace who defended the Amazon jungle, resulted in many deaths and injuries. The work focuses in particular on the story of how unemployment was experienced during this period.
Rosa Naid Cruz is currently studying composition with professor Jose Sosaya at the National Music University in Peru. Her works have been premiered both inside and outside the country, including at Synapse II “Concert for the Premiere of Works by Composition Students” 2019, Meeting Between Composers and Interpreters, organized by the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of La Plata (ARG), and PumPum Yachkan (2021) organized by Asimtria. soundcloud.com/rosa-naid-cruz-tica
»AMARAS« deals with the psychological and introspective process that we are all living through since the pandemic, independent of our nationality. As a result of the pandemic and lockdown, society had the opportunity to understand itself in its global entirety and not just as isolated single nations. This encouraged not only cooperation between different societies but also promoted a mutual exchange of what is truly important. Whether coming from Germany or Peru, what is important is to look inside oneself in order to be able to see others.
Isa Otoya is a Peruvian composer, songwriter, and music producer and a founding member of RETAMA. She holds a bachelor’s degree in music composition from the Peruvian University of Applied Sciences (UPC). She has composed soundtracks for documentaries, short films, and multidisciplinary artist projects. Alongside this, she is developing her career as a singer-songwriter and musical producer. In July 2021, she released her first conceptual solo album »De un acorde«. facebook.com/isaotoyamusica
»Of the uncertain« takes up themes of insecurity and innocence. The piece references three different graffiti (one from Perú and two from Berlin) to describe the transition to adulthood and the uncertainty about the next stage of life. The basic idea of the project »La incertidumbre del mañana« (The Uncertainty of Tomorrow) is reflected in the transformative process of the piece which develops the initial playful character into dense atmospheres.
Pía Alvarado Arróspide is a Peruvian composer who holds a bachelor’s degree in music composition. Her latest works have been performed at the 2nd Young Composers Premiere Festival (2020), the Concert in Commemoration of the International Day of Indigenous Women of the Ministry of Culture of Peru (2021) and the Interlight – Cirrus Light Concert during the UNESCO Week of Sound (2022). She is currently in the masters program in composition at the International University of La Rioja in Spain. soundcloud.com/pia-alvarado-arrospide
Inspired by four graffiti from Lima and Berlin with powerful messages such as »Less censorship, more memory«, »Berlin against borders« and »Peru, wake up«, »Collective Distortion« addresses the social constrictions that force us, from a very young age, to be silent, to submit and to forget. Such forces lead to a distortion of our perception of reality and ultimately to a collective amnesia, with the collective memory being manipulated in favor of temporary interests. Thus, the piece begins with an evocative atmosphere that delves into the depths of our collective memory – with a sudden interruption as through censorship and curbs on individual freedom. It concludes with a kind of ›collective awakening‹ to allow for the revival of memory and social consciousness.
Claudia Sofía Alvarez is currently completing her bachelor’s degree in music composition at the National University of Music in Peru. Her latest works have been performed at the 2022 Women Composers Festival of Hartford (US), 2021 International Young Composers Academy in Ticino (CH) and Ictus Ensemble’s 2021-22 season (BEL). Her music has been released on albums including ABLAZE Records Pierrot Ensemble Series Vol. 4 and TIERRA: Acousmatic Works of Women Composers of the UNM. soundcloud.com/claudiasofialvarez
»Savia de Bosque« (The Power of the Forest) investigates the interrelationships between visual art and the sonic elements associated with the world of graffiti as a collaborative and interdisciplinary project. Models for organizing sensory associations arise from the idea of synesthesia. Thus, the work focuses on the dynamics of the performative and its translation into an audio-visual language. The composition and its title reference a short text taken from graffiti in the city of Lima:
The forest has always been our pharmacy Since we were little we used plants to heal. During the Covid-19 pandemic, in our community of Cantagallo we treated ourselves with eucalyptus and matico. We share our heritage in wall paintings in order to heal and offer resistance. Shipibo Konibo
The text refers to the traditions of a region and turns them into a domain of the present. This preservation of tradition and ancestral craftsmanship is elemental for the culture of memory.
Ana Maria Rodriguez is a composer that links the spontaneity of improvisation with fully composed scores. She studied composition, piano, history, and philosophy in Buenos Aires and electronic music as well as algorithmic composition at the Phonos studio in Barcelona. AnA Maria Rodriguez has composed numerous pieces, concert installations, mixed media, or music theater works for a wide range of instruments using live-electronics and computer technology. In 2005 she founded the women-only ensemble ‘Les Femmes Savantes’. Her works have been performed at major festivals throughout Europe and abroad including: Berlin in Lights (Carnegie Hall NYC) and Donaueschinger Musiktage. She lives and works in Berlin. www.anamariarodriguez.net
For »Magallanes IV« the artist travelled to Patagonia several times, specifically, to the Magallanes region during a 2019 artist residency, to concentrate critically on the history of the region and the different perspectives and experiences of the people who live there. Her focus here was on the European colonization beginning in the middle of the 19th century and the resulting near-extinction of the indigenous peoples of Patagonia including their culture and language. The violent character of the European expansion can be seen with special cruelty in Patagonia. The still virgin nature and the non-western native population paid the ultimate price in the end and continue to do so today. Together with musician Eduardo Velásquez (video), who is based in Punta Arenas, Paula Schopf worked on the sound material for »Magallanes IV« from field recordings and the synthetic sounds of analog synthesizers in which voices, ambient sounds, interviews, and texts are integrated homogenously. The sonic material flows without narrative limitations, with frequency ranges that emerge and shift, condensed into what is essential. The individual components appear in the sonic flow with differing intensity. Complex relationships arise from simultaneity, interference, conflict, and correspondence.
Paula Schopf is a Chilean artist and has been active as a DJ and musician for over 20 years under the stage name Chica Paula. Upon invitation from the German artist Gudrun Gut, she joined the Berlin artist collective Ocean Club. Her productions have appeared since 2003 on the Berlin label Monika Enterprise. Together with the musician Max Loderbauer, Schopf recorded her first album »42 Mädchen« in 2003, followed by »Under The Balcony« in 2007. To this day, she produces remixes for bands and artists such as Donna Regina and Hauschka. Paula Schopf works with electronic sounds, utilizing soundscapes and field recordings as aesthetic and compositional source material. The detailed examination of sound in urban spaces and its inherent social, historical, and political realities has become her main interest. Paula Schopf lives in Berlin. paulaschopf.de soundcloud.com/chica-paula
»Imperfect Breath« revolves around two recordings that offered me artistic refuge during a very transient period in my life, when my foundation for being was not a geographical or emotional home, but favorite sounds that I composed with or performed with again and again. The first is a recording of the universal time clock as heard on shortwave radio frequencies, the second a recording of me playing a sruti box [music instrument originating from the Indian subcontinent] in Valparaíso, Chile, with a friend’s dog listening and occasionally barking in the background. The clock recording was transformed via self-cut vinyl records and dub plates; the second is unmodified. »Imperfect Breath« was commissioned by Avatar, Quebec as part of a sonic dialogue with Chantal Dumas’ work »Le son-refuge«.
Anna Friz (b. 1970 in Vancouver, Canada) is an artist and musician who creates media art, sound and transmission art. She specializes in self-reflexive radio for broadcast, installation or performance, where radio is the source, subject, and medium of the work. She studied Media Studies at Concordia University in Montréal and received her PhD in Communication and Culture from York University in Toronto in 2011. From 2011 to 2013 Anna Friz partook in a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been presented at festivals worldwide. Her recent awards include a Hellman Fellowship (2018), the Phonurgia Nova residency award (2019) and a Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship (2022). In 2015 she joined the Film and Digital Media department at University of California in Santa Cruz, where she is currently Associate Professor. soundcloud.com/annafriz
