To all those who feel the urge to stretch their wings
»Is the bird scared of the sound its wings make when they open?« —Clarissa Pinkola Estés
»I reign in the azure like an unknown sphinx; I unite my heart of snow to the whiteness of swans« — Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal: XVII. La Beauté
The trampled otherness, the wrench, the wandering, the freezing, and then the itch and the explosive freedom of the stretched out wings of an Ugly Little Duckling. – Hans Christian Andersen
The materials used for this piece are taken from a soundbase of ice storms (from the ice storm that struck Québec in 1998), erupting volcanoes and nuclear tests in forgotten deserts. […] Through the use of sonic metaphors and highly evocative referential sounds, the music stages mental pictures associated with various ›wild woman‹ archetypes taken from myths, dreams and tales. These first two parts are introspective works digging into the intimate space of affects. [English translation from French: François Couture]
Marcelle Deschênes (b. 1939 in Price, Canada) is a composer, whose works encompass multimedia performances, installations, video productions, electroacoustic and instrumental music as well as actions with non-musicians. She studied at the Université de Montréal followed by advanced training and work at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales with Pierre Schaeffer, François Bayle and Guy Reibel, and at the Université Paris 8. Deschênes returned to Canada in 1971 and took a teaching and research position at the electronic music studio of Université Laval. She has received numerous international awards, including several times prices at the Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges. She founded in1979 the electroacoustic studio Bruit Blanc and the following year became a professor at the Université de Montréal where in 1991 she continued to teach electroacoustic composition. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcelle_Deschenes
Fukushima, March 11, 2011: earthquake, tsunami, nuclear disaster… Still unstable to this day. An unpredicted wave over history. Lives wasted by earth that shook until it made the irreparable aspect of human stupidity leak out. A country devastated by the catastrophe. We and our seas are condemned by nuclear power. The desolation and nightmare are at our doors. Soon, we will be excluded from the radioactive zone, our planet. What percentage of the planet will eventually be included in the damned territories, the exclusion zone? Harmonics emerge from the main tone (shakuhachi), and then fly around, randomly pushed by the nightmare, eventually leaving only a few recurring notes mixed in with the resounding disaster. Muted music comes to haunt us with memories of raw earth. The only thing we can catch is the sound of angels. A beat-driven tune created by loops of 58 // Freitag 8. Juli Freitag 8. JuIi // 59 shakuhachi micro-samples and bass frequency sounds become a call to death, anguish, and disorder, before they get slowly deconstructed. That is humanity’s destiny! [English translation from French: François Couture]
Roxanne Turcotte (b. 1960 in Montréal, Canada) is a composer, keyboardist and sound designer. She has built her aesthetics around a playful and cinema-like art of integration, often with a socio-political flavor, tinged with poetry and humor. After studying piano and composition at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, Roxanne Turcotte graduated as the first woman of her generation in the electroacoustic composition program at the Université de Montréal in 1988. Her music has won numerous awards and distinctions including most recently the Prix Jan V. Matejcek pour la nouvelle musique classique (SOCAN) or the Concours international de musique électroacoustique et d’art sonore de Bourges, France. She is asked to sit on composition juries, and she has been active in the Quebec and European avant-garde community for years. roxanneturcotte.com
»A Farewell to S.O.S.« is a movement from the work »Figures du temps« [Figures of Time].
Figures du temps What to do with the real? How to create an aesthetic space that rejects amnesia? Crossroads and collisions of individual events and of public events. A suite that attempts to deal with »the individual human life, small, poor, defenseless but magnificent« as Tadeusz Kantor said. »It is only in this human life that truth, sanctity and grandeur are maintained today. We must save them from destruction and oblivion. Save them from all the powers of this world.« Media flow, poetry/resistance, disappearance of Morse code: February 1999. [English translation from French: Sean Ferguson, Traçantes]
Monique Jean (*1960) studied electroacoustic composition at the Université de Montréal with Francis Dhomont. In addition to her acousmatic compositions, her work is also regularly associated with video and experimental films, with dance and with installations. She is interested in the tensions, fractures and shocks of sound materials in order to achieve a transmutation of the real into the poetic. Finalist in several international competitions, including Ciber@rt Valencia, Spain, Musica Nova in Prague, Czech Republic and the Electroacoustic Music Competition in Bourges, France, her works are regularly performed and broadcast during numerous international concerts and festivals. Monique Jean lives and works in Montreal. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/monique-jean-emc
»Magnétisme terrestre« is a movement from the work »Oscillations planétaires«.
»Oscillations planétaires« evokes geology. In all the layers that make it, from its core to its surface areas, Planet Earth is inhabited by undulatory motions of extremely varied temporal scales. Some are inscribed in a geological timeframe while others follow a daily cycle. This oscillatory ensemble contributes to the mechanisms that rule the Earth’s dynamics. [… Amongst several, geomagnetism – »Magnétisme terrestre« – is one of the phenomena evoked in the work …] The magnetic field of the Earth has a strange ability: it can flip, meaning that the North Pole becomes the South Pole and vice versa. Magnetic inversions happen periodically, but at irregular, unpredictable intervals. The Earth has known hundreds of such inversions in its lifetime. The last one happened about 780,000 years ago. [English translation from French: François Couture]
Chantal Dumas (* in Drummondville, Canada) is a composer and sound artist. She studied eurhythmics in 1982 and, decades later, in 2012, interactive media at the Université du Québec à Montréal. The microphone is one of her most beloved tools, and she considers listening as a way of embracing the world. Her works have been programmed by several festivals and were presented at the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec (MNBAQ), the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV), Harvestworks in New York City, and also in a Montréal subway car. Chantal Dumas’s works have earned her awards and distinctions from Prix Opus (Québec, 2009-10), Phonurgia Nova Awards France, and Prix Bohemia Radio in the Czech Republic. She has received numerous grants and is also active as a jury member and keynote speaker. chantaldumas.org
Beyond the surface meanings of language we may become aware of a world where the play of decomposition, association and juxtaposition produce an unlimited number of sounds and sonorities. A kind of verbal delirium, or vertigo. »Arksalalartôq«, based on texts by Québec poets Noël Audet and Gilles Marsolais, expresses the vertigo of words and sounds, by analogy with the Inuit game (most often played by women) in which participants test their creative and inventive powers as well as their stamina by emitting sounds most of which are meaningless. During the creation of this work, Coulombe Saint-Marcoux recognized the resistance of some sonic materials and the importance of openness for the composer. In an interview with Lyse Richer, she said that she worked for two days on a ten-second montage that refused to do what she wished. Suddenly, she decided to play it backwards, and found the result to be marvellous: »one must not be too stubborn. The material at hand has its potential at the start, and its exigencies and its limits« (Richer 1984: 22). [English translation from French: Andra McCartney]
Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux (b. 1938 in La Doré, Canada, d. 1985) was a composer and music educator. Her orchestral compositions were strongly influenced by her electroacoustic work, while her interests also included music theater and poetry. Saint-Marcoux studied at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal (CMQM), and the Conservatoire de Paris with Yvonne Hubert, Gilbert Amy, Claude Champagne, Pierre Schaeffer and others. She received numerous commissions for compositions, such as from the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. In 1967 she won the Prix d’Europe for the composition of Modulaire, a work for orchestra and Ondes Martenot. She founded the Groupe international de musique électroacoustique de Paris (1969) and, after returning to Montreal in 1971, she taught at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal where she established an electroacoustic composition studio. Saint-Marcoux died on February 2, 1985 of a brain tumor at the age of 46. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/micheline-coulombe-saint-marcoux
»Boat, River, Moon« was commissioned for a modern dance, choreographed by David Earle of the Toronto Dance Theatre and was first performed in September of that year. The general format of the music – divided into four sections – follows the narrative of the dance, but the rhythm within each of the sections, that is to say the change in flow of tension and energy in the sound, is not meant to parallel or duplicate the movement of the dancers, but rather to explore the drama of the dance in its own time. The dance itself is constructed in Noh Theatre form and presents the allegory that the three aspects of ourselves – the warrior (mind), the woman (senses), and the priest (spirit) – are at war with each other and where one is weakened, the whole is vulnerable and oblivion reclaims us. 52 // Freitag 8. Juli Freitag 8. JuIi // 53 »Boat, River, Moon« was composed in 1972 at the Electronic Music Studios of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Equipment used for the realization of the music involved two small Putney synthesizers with keyboards, six additional sine-square oscillators, three two-channel Revox tape records and two four-input, single-output mixers.
Ann Southam (b. Winnipeg 1937, d. Toronto 2010) completed her musical studies at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music in the early 1960’s. She began a teaching and composing career which included a long and productive association with modern dance. As well as creating music for some of Canada’s major modern dance companies and choreographers including The Toronto Dance Theatre, DanceMakers, and Rachel Browne, she was an instructor in electronic music at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. While a great deal of her work was electroacoustic music on tape, in her later years she became increasingly interested in music for acoustic instruments. Ann Southam’s work was commissioned through the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the CBC, and has been performed in Canada, Europe and the U.S. She is a member of the Canadian Music Centre and a founding member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers. She was the recipient of the Friends of Canadian Music Award in 2001. Ann Southam passed away November 25, 2010. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Southam thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ann-southam-emc
The composition is in two sections. The first, »Elegy«, is essentially tonal, set for voice and flute, and selected from Leonard Cohen’s [poetry book] »Let us Compare Mythologies«. »Two Went to Sleep« (from Cohen’s »Parasites of Heaven«), by contrast, lent itself by its poetic form to juxtaposition of words and sentences – to a more contemporary treatment. It is scored for spoken voice, flute, percussion, and tape. Most of the electronic sounds are based on pre-recordings of the poem (by Mary Morrison), and of the opening passage played by the live flautist. These sounds have been transformed electronically, by filtering, reverberation, speed changes, montage, etc., and spliced together in a predetermined order.
Norma Beecroft (*1934 in Oshawa, Canada) is a composer, producer and broadcaster. Next to flute and piano, she studied composition with John Weinzweig, Aaron Copland, and at Darmstädter Ferienkurse with Bruno Maderna. She also had electronic music classes with Myron Schaeffer and worked with Mario Davidovsky at today’s Computer Music Center at Columbia University in New York. Her musical interest lies in the exploration of mixed media. In her works, the choice and blending of timbres let electronically produced or altered sounds appear more as an extension of vocal and instrumental sounds rather than as an alien alternative. Beecroft received a Major Armstrong Award with her documentary »The Computer in Music« (1976). She twice won the Canada Council’s Lynch-Staunton Award for composition. She co-founded the New Music Concerts series in Toronto in 1971 and later taught electronic music and composition, including at York University (from 1984-87). thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/norma-beecroft-emc en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Beecroft
For the Heroines of Sound Festival 2022, sound artist and vocalist Alessandra Eramo creates a performance that references an electronic composition by Zosha Di Castri: During the pandemic, Di Castri developed an electronic composition and invited other musicians (who are also mothers) to improvise a response to her piece. She then assembled the recordings of these improvisations into a unique new composition. With this project, Di Castri also initiated a conversation on the artists’ experiences as both mothers and musicians navigating the seemingly incompatible worlds of professional music and motherhood while at the same time being confronted with personal challenges and profoundly inspiring moments in both worlds. Based on Di Castri’s composition, Alessandra Eramo interprets a new work for voice, word fragments, noise, and text using extended vocal techniques, electronics, field recordings and a tape collage. With her observations on reconciling time and productivity – in the sense of giving birth, or of coming into being (with regard to the earth, the plant world, and motherhood) – she explores the potential ambiguity of precarity/fluidity and dissonance/harmony.
Alessandra Eramo (b. 1982 in Taranto, IT) is a sound artist and vocalist who works with performance, installation, text-sound composition, video and drawing, to explore the latent acoustic territories of the human voice and noise as socio-political material. She was trained in classical singing and studied Fine Arts and Performance in Milan, Stuttgart, and Venice. She has performed and exhibited internationally at venues and festivals including the Audiorama Stockholm, Liverpool Biennial, and Venice Biennale. She was Artist in Residence at the Electronic Music Studio (EMS) in Stockholm and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center in New York City. She is co-founder of Corvo Records – vinyl & sound art production – and lives in Berlin. www.ezramo.com
Hekla Magnúsdóttir is a performer of electronic music and film composer from Iceland. Emerging from no particular scene, ascribing to no particular rules, creating sparse, delicate, fractal music. As a creative tool, the theremin – bizarre, unique, rarely heard – can be expressive, intuitive and highly adaptable. In Hekla’s hands, her instrument covers an enormous range, from skittering birdsong of high frequency chirrups and chirps, to grinding, tectonic sub-bass. www.heklaheklahekla.com
For the Heroines of Sound Festival 2022, sound artist and vocalist Alessandra Eramo creates a performance that references an electronic composition by Zosha Di Castri: During the pandemic, Di Castri developed an electronic composition and invited other musicians (who are also mothers) to improvise a response to her piece. She then assembled the recordings of these improvisations into a unique new composition. With this project, Di Castri also initiated a conversation on the artists’ experiences as both mothers and musicians navigating the seemingly incompatible worlds of professional music and motherhood while at the same time being confronted with personal challenges and profoundly inspiring moments in both worlds. Based on Di Castri’s composition, Alessandra Eramo interprets a new work for voice, word fragments, noise, and text using extended vocal techniques, electronics, field recordings and a tape collage. With her observations on reconciling time and productivity – in the sense of giving birth, or of coming into being (with regard to the earth, the plant world, and motherhood) – she explores the potential ambiguity of precarity/fluidity and dissonance/harmony.
Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer, pianist and sound artist. Her internationally performed work extends beyond purely concert music including projects with electronics, installations, and collaborations with video and dance. She has worked with ensembles and orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the New York Philharmonic and JACK Quartet among others. Zosha Di Castri is a recent fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris and a 2021 Guggenheim fellow. Her debut album Tachitipo (2019) can be found on New Focus Recordings. Zosha Di Castri is currently the Francis Goelet Assistant Professor of Composition at Columbia University. She lives in New York. www.zoshadicastri.com
Working with the Minimoog was a challenge that turned out to be a really enjoyable and rewarding experience. At first, access to the sound material that I usually work with seemed to be tricky with this instrument. Creating soundscapes of dense textures with almost pulsing elements, sounds with little or no reference to exact pitch, or flexible, convertible transitions morphing from one starting point to another with the possibility of returning easily to the previous state appeared to be at odds with anything that the Minimoog could lead me to intuitively. Thus, in order to achieve a light and unpretentious sound quality, I needed to break through the limitations of the instrument. Only then could a structural clarity (and to a certain extent, simplicity) be developed. In the process, I emphasized the specific sound quality of the instrument. This complex and vibrant sound resonated with me to such a degree that I wished to present it to the listener in an almost unprocessed version – with as little masking as possible.
Sebastian Berweck is one of the most sought-after pianists and performers of experimental contemporary music today. He is known for his energetic interpretations of unusual repertoire, with a focus on extended techniques for the piano as well as electronics. Sebastian Berweck has appeared as soloist and with ensembles at numerous festivals for contemporary music. From 2008 to 2012 – and with the support of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) – he pursued doctoral research at the Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) at the University of Huddersfield. His thesis »It worked yesterday – On (re-) performing electroacoustic music« was published in 2013. Sebastian Berweck is a founding member of stock11 and Lange//Berweck//Lorenz. He lives in Berlin. www.sebastianberweck.de
»Fracture 22« explores the possibilities of alternative notation systems to translate the different timbres and microtonal clusters of the minimoog and theremin into the composition. As a composer who primarily writes for the theremin, in this piece, I connect micro-tonalities with minuscule movements of the hands, the ultimate goal being to expand and combine the timbres of both instruments. The hand movements in the air near the theremin’s antennas and on the filters of the minimoog create timbral modulations via different interfaces. These move between pure tones and noises with a fluctuating presence and resonance through the control of filters.
Annesley Black (b. in Ottawa Ontario, Canada) studied composition with Brian Cherney in Montreal, with York Höller in Cologne and Mathias Spahlinger, Orm Finnendahl (electronic music) and Cornelius Schwehr (film music) in Freiburg. She has appeared as an improviser and sound director in Canada, Austria, Switzerland and Germany; her collaborations with renowned artists range from film, dance and theater productions to multi-media installations/performances. Her works have been performed internationally by various ensembles including Ensemble Modern and hr-Sinfonieorchester. Among her many awards and distinctions for her work is the Composer Prize from the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung (2019) and a portrait CD from Deutsche Musikrat, 2014. Since 2018, Black has been a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin and the Canadian Music Centre. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annesley_Black
»Fracture 22« explores the possibilities of alternative notation systems to translate the different timbres and microtonal clusters of the minimoog and theremin into the composition. As a composer who primarily writes for the theremin, in this piece, I connect micro-tonalities with minuscule movements of the hands, the ultimate goal being to expand and combine the timbres of both instruments. The hand movements in the air near the theremin’s antennas and on the filters of the minimoog create timbral modulations via different interfaces. These move between pure tones and noises with a fluctuating presence and resonance through the control of filters.
Dorit Chrysler (born in Graz, Austria) first studied musicology in Vienna before beginning her solo career in New York in 2000. Since then, the composer, producer and singer has performed with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and collaborated notably with Cluster, Adult, CERN, Carsten Nicolai, and Laurie Spiegel. Alongside a residency at Pioneer Works NY and a grant from the Knightsbridge Foundation, she has received commissions from MoMA in New York and the Biennale di Venezia. As director of the NY Theremin Society, she supported the release of the THEREMIN 100 compilation featuring 50 international theremin performers to commemorate the 100th birthday of the instrument in 2020. She is the founder of the Kid Cool Theremin School in New York, the first international school for theremin, and of the »Dame Electric« festival, dedicated to female pioneers of analog electronic music. Dorit Chrysler currently lives in New York. www.doritchrysler.com
Working with the Minimoog was a challenge that turned out to be a really enjoyable and rewarding experience. At first, access to the sound material that I usually work with seemed to be tricky with this instrument. Creating soundscapes of dense textures with almost pulsing elements, sounds with little or no reference to exact pitch, or flexible, convertible transitions morphing from one starting point to another with the possibility of returning easily to the previous state appeared to be at odds with anything that the Minimoog could lead me to intuitively. Thus, in order to achieve a light and unpretentious sound quality, I needed to break through the limitations of the instrument. Only then could a structural clarity (and to a certain extent, simplicity) be developed. In the process, I emphasized the specific sound quality of the instrument. This complex and vibrant sound resonated with me to such a degree that I wished to present it to the listener in an almost unprocessed version – with as little masking as possible.
Svetlana Maraš (*1985, Serbia) works at the intersection of experimental music, sound art, and new media. After graduating from Aalto University (Helsinki) where she worked as a research assistant, she studied composition and art at Columbia University School of the Arts, the Mozarteum International Summer Academy, and the Darmstadt Summer Courses. Svetlana Maraš has presented her work internationally at festivals including the CTM (Berlin), Ars Electronica (Linz), and ISEA (Dubai). She was recently awarded the prestigious Serbian composition prize, Mokranjac, and the Vitomir Bogić Prize from Radio Belgrade. From 2016 – 2021, she was artistic director of the Electronic Studio of Radio Belgrade and since September 2021 is Professor of Creative Music Technolgy at the Swiss FHNW Academy of Art and Design and co-director of the Electronic Music Studio Basel. www.svetlanamaras.com
For two performers, contact mics, vocoders and Minimoog (2022, German premiere) 12′ commissioned by Klang – Copenhagen Avantgarde Music Festival with the support of Koda Kultur
Lindemann’s music focuses on the exploration of the human body as a musical instrument, its limitations and the possibilities for connectivity. »Trio« embodies this investigation of sound, space, and body through gestures, voice, lights, and the synthesizer. The piece was written for Sebastian Berweck.
Kirstine Lindemann is a Danish composer and performer whose work focuses on the body and movement as compositional material. She studied at the music academies of Helsinki, Amsterdam, and Odense where she completed a master’s degree as performer and instrumentalist. Alongside numerous fellowships, she was awarded prizes from the Amsterdam Fringe Festival and the Icelandic TUF Chamber Music Competition, and in 2021, the Carl Nielsen Prize. Lindemann has toured Europe and South Africa as composer and performer. She is an active member of the feminist ensemble Damkapellet (DK) and, together with composer-performer Yiran Zhao, is part of the duo OTHER EYE. kirstinelindemann.com
The work »other eye« situates the convergence of and difference between two bodies at the center of its dramaturgy. The two figures are both alike and unlike; and the degree to which they are able to engage with one another forms the core of the piece’s dramatic tension. The piece invites the audience to view the two figures as simultaneously alike and unlike, exposing the dissonance in our conception of self and other. At the same time, the piece invites a certain intimacy in our consideration of performing bodies, magnifying the performers’ physical bodies to the scale of sound and video installation, bringing their inner corporeality to the stage. We are no longer at a safe, objective distance from the performers on stage, but experience their inner physicality directly through contact microphones and magnified video. The piece thus operates on several levels in its consideration of the human connection with and through living bodies, and provides the audience with a disconcerting, sometimes dispassionate, but also sometimes quite humorous or simply human, encounter with human physicality. — N. Andrew Walsh
»other hand« is a part of the work series »other other«. In »other hand« Lindemann and Zhao work with the hand, the human hand and a wooden hand, as a conceptual, visual and sonic frame.
The composer-performer duo OTHER EYE (Yiran Zhao and Kirstine Lindemann) breaks with the traditional postulate that music is primarily sound. In their musical performances, they usually work without conventional instruments, but instead with the finest physical impulses, which are scrutinized through the media. The collective kicked off their collaboration as participants in the final concert of the workshop with Jennifer Walshe and David Helbich at the 2018 International Summer Courses Darmstadt. This program, too, offers a highly differentiated, nuanced catalog of movements and gestures that coagulate in multiple combinations into ever new sound narratives. kirstinelindemann.com/other-eye-2/
Alexandra Cárdenas’s work focuses on the algorithmic behavior of music and the exploration of musicality within code. She is a core member of the international live coding and algorave community and performs worldwide using the live coding platforms SuperCollider and TidalCycles. In 2017, she was the Chair of the International Live Coding Conference in Morelia, Mexico. Alexandra studied composition at the Los Andes University in Bogota, Colombia, and later completed a Sound Studies and Sonic Arts Master’s Degree at Universität der Künste, Berlin. Besides her live-coded music works, she has composed contemporary pieces for orchestra, ensembles and soloists, and worked with theater companies in Mexico, Belgium and Germany. cargocollective.com/tiemposdelruido/Alexandra-Cardenas soundcloud.com/tiemposdelruido
Aleksander Wnuk (b. 1987) is a multi-percussionist, performer and sound artist. In addition to creating his own sound projects, he focuses on performing contemporary music. He is particularly interested in the corporeality of performance, post-instrumental themes, and intermedial projects. He is currently a member of the ensemble Spółdzielnia Muzyczna and the Krakow Improvisers Orchestra. He has trained at the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdansk, The Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and the impuls Akademie in Graz, among others. He completed his PhD at the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Krakow, where he currently teaches in the Percussion and Contemporary Music Department. aleksanderwnuk.com
There is no room so walled up that it will not open with such a trusty door, if you have but the strength to insinuate it. – Bruno Schulz from »Solitude«
»Solitude« – a story by the Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) – was the inspiration and point of departure for the composition »En Face«. The percussion forms its own space with door and mirror. The soloist is almost inside a cage surrounded by his instruments and objects. He is protected and defenseless at the same time. He plays only with his hands, without sticks, nothing lies between him and the hard surfaces that he hits, caresses, or touches. Microphones are attached to his wrists – to a certain extent, he zooms in to the sounds, the objects, puts them under a microscope, listens with his hands as the hands become ears in a resonating choreography. After an attack, his hands often make extra movements to capture, reinforce, or rhythmicize resonances; the soloist performs, so to speak, partially in the air, a symbol for the vacuum. »En Face« was composed in 2018 for solo percussion, narrator, and symphony orchestra. It was premiered in 2019 with the Philharmonic State Orchestra Cottbus, Aleksander Wnuk and Jakob Diehl. The idea of solitude took on yet another meaning with the covid pandemic, and during the lockdown in 2020, I reworked the percussion part into a stand-alone solo for Aleksander Wnuk. The actor Jakob Diehl voiced the German translation of Bruno Schulz’s text.
Sarah Nemtsov (*1980 in Oldenburg, Germany) studied composition in Hanover and Berlin with Nigel Osborne, Johannes Schöllhorn and Walter Zimmermann. Her music captivates through sensitively sounded setups, through complex and energetic textures, musical stratifications, interactions between acoustic instruments and electronics, as well as references to other arts and other media. Sarah Nemtsov has received numerous awards and scholarships, including the Busoni Composition Prize of the Berlin Academy of the Arts. In 2020, she was nominated for the Opus Klassik Prize in the category »Composer of the Year«. Nemtsov’s works are performed at internationally renowned festivals – such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wien Modern and ECLAT festival. Teaching positions brought her with a DAAD short-term lectureship to the University of Haifa in Israel and to the Darmstadt summer course. She lives in Berlin. www.sarah-nemtsov.de
»Beneath the Forest Floor« is composed from sounds recorded in old–growth forests on British Columbia’s westcoast [throughout the summer of 1991]. It moves us through the visible forest, into its’ shadow world, its’ spirit; into that which effects our body, heart and mind when we experience forest. Most of the sounds for this composition were recorded in one specific location, the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island. This old-growth rainforest contains some of the tallest known Sitka spruce in the world and cedar trees that are well over one thousand years old. Its’ stillness is enormous, punctuated only occasionally by the sounds of small songbirds, ravens and jays, squirrels, flies and mosquitoes. […] Better still, [Beneath the Forest Floor] hopes to encourage listeners to visit a place like the Carmanah, half of which has already been destroyed by clear-cut logging. Aside from experiencing its huge stillness a visit will also transmit a very real knowledge of what is lost if these forests disappear: not only the trees but also an inner space that they transmit to us: a sense of balance and focus, of new energy and life. The inner forest, the forest in us.
Hildegard Westerkamp (*1946 in Osnabrück, Germany) is a sound artist, sound researcher, composer of electroacoustic music, sound ecologist, flutist, pianist, and author. Her works, which have been performed worldwide, chiefly focus on aspects of the acoustic environment. Westerkamp moved to Canada in 1968, studied music at the University of British Columbia and joined the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University to explore soundscapes under the direction of R. Murray Schafer. She later taught courses in acoustic communication at Simon Fraser University and has written extensively on soundscapes, acoustic ecology, and listening. She is a founding member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and lives in Vancouver. www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca
»Katana of Choice« is a simulated duel-based ›visual novel‹ type video game where the graphics, soundtrack and narrative are provided exclusively by the live ensemble. Inspired by wuxia martial arts and film noir (Five Fingers of Death, Enter the Dragon, Kill Bill, The Warriors) the pace is relentless, moving quickly from scene to scene with unexpected twists, where members trade off – pushing one another technically and sonically. The ensemble writing depicts semiotics of the genres acoustically while analogue synths, cap guns, acoustic guitars in specific tunings, foot stomps, hand claps and call-and-response vocalizations all become percussion instruments and visual enhancements. Panning, stereophony, and spatial treatments are carefully considered to evoke an immersive, sonic 3D, otherworldly experience.
Nicole Lizée is a composer and video artist. She creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences including early MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Alexander McQueen, thrash metal, early video game culture, and 1960s psychedelia and modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded technology and captures, notates, and integrates them into live performance. Nicole Lizée received a Master of Music degree from McGill University in 2001 and has since received over 50 commissions for new works, including from the Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, and the New York Philharmonic. Among numerous awards, her most recent include the prestigious 2019 Prix Opus as Composer of the Year and the SOCAN Jan. V. Matejcek Award. She lives in Montreal. www.nicolelizee.com
LUX:NM contemporary music ensemble berlin was founded by Ruth Velten and Silke Lange in 2010, with the aim of realizing self-created and versatile chamber music programs with a flexible group of instruments. The intensive ensemble work makes extraordinary new projects possible: interdisciplinary projects as well as intercultural approaches naturally find their place here. The ensemble’s instrumentalists are chamber musicians who are much in demand, have received awards at international competitions, and can regularly be found performing on major concert stages and festivals, including the Warsaw Autumn, MaerzMusik, and Festival de Música Contemporánea Chile. In 2017, the album LUXUS was awarded the German Record Critic’s Award and was placed on their List of the Best. In 2018 the album STRANDGUT and in 2021 the album DARK LUX was released. www.luxnewmusic.de
»Orison« is part of the series »In Praise of Shadows« which was inspired by Tanizaki Jun‘ichirō’s essay of the same name from 1933. The essay describes how shadows and negative space are integral to traditional Japanese aesthetics, both in music and architecture, as well as in food and the design of everyday objects. As Tanizaki explains, »[W]e find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of [its] shadows… Without shadows there would be no beauty«. »Orison«, for three music boxes and electronics, is underpinned by recordings of children during wartime, speaking and singing about hope, peace and the suffering they had to endure. Their melodies are brought to the fore through the music boxes. The work was commissioned by the 21C Music Festival (Canada).
Kotoka Suzuki (b. in Tokyo, Japan) studied composition at Indiana University and Stanford University with Jonathan Harvey. Her work encompasses both multimedia and instrumental works, including interactive audio-visuals in both concert and installation formats. Her works often explore themes such as living, breathing, and wind. Suzuki’s music has been presented at international venues such as the ZKM | Media Museum, Lucerne Festival and ISCM World Music Days, and has been performed by the Arditti Quartet, the Pacifica Quartet and the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig, among others. Suzuki has received numerous awards and grants and was a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Residence www.kotokasuzuki.com
Juliana Hodkinson (b. 1971, UK) works with instruments, objects, electronics, text, voice and visual formats. Field recordings, foley and ripped media figure alongside abstract concepts and social relations in both her live and installation works. Juliana Hodkinson studied musicology and philosophy at King’s College Cambridge, and Japanese Studies at the University of Sheffield, and holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen on the subject of silence in music and sound art. She has received major accolades such as the Carl Nielsen Prize, the Stuttgart Composition Prize, and the Danish Arts Foundation 3-year open working grant. She is presently Associate Professor in Composition at the Grieg Academy in Bergen, Norway, and Associate Professor in Classical and Electronic Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark. She lives in Berlin. www.julianahodkinson.net
»Echoes of O’s« consists of silent gestures / forms of movement that are to be sharply distinguished from one another. The ›fast gestures‹ should be performed fast and intermittently (rhythmically exactly notated, resulting in a musically precise performance), the ›slow gesture‹ refers to slowly flowing movements whose level of intensity and rhythmic sequence are precisely indicated, whereas the ›frozen gesture‹ describes a fixed rhythm of stationary movements. The result is a completely composed, three-part polyphonic silent composition which, in omitting the sonic surface, aspires to be experienced as pure musical form. While the rhythm, dynamics, and form of the piece are precisely defined, the shaping of the concrete gestures and their ›instrumentation‹ are entrusted to the interpreter(s). ›O‹ refers to the sound ›O‹ in its different shades of meaning, where it can assume a constantly new significance depending upon the gestural context.
Charlotte Seither (*1965 in Landau, Germany) studied composition, piano, German language and literature, and musicology in Hanover and Berlin. She obtained a doctorate in philosophy in 1998. Her works have been performed at numerous festivals, including Wien Modern, ISCM World Music Days Tongyeong in South Korea, and the Venice Biennale. She has received numerous prizes and awards, including first prize in the Prague Spring International Music Competition, the Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, and the German Music Authors prize. She was also awarded a fellowship by the German Ministry of Culture for a one-year stay at the Villa Massimo, the German Academy in Rome. She is a member of the GEMA Supervisory Board and the European Academy of Arts and Sciences in Salzburg. www.charlotteseither.de
The title of Mirela Ivičević’s »Heart Core« describes the focus of her interest in the composition process, namely, how and in what way the instruments can meet each other half way. It is about an encounter in a shared inner space. Drawing from her extensive collaboration with the Black Page Orchestra, the composer works out nuanced imitations and approaches for the instruments of the LUX:NM ensemble, capturing each of their typical sound qualities and characteristic playing styles and allowing them to resonate newly translated.
Mirela Ivičević(b. in Split, Croatia) explores the subversive potential of sound in her work. She brings fragments of reality into a surreal acoustic world, usually leading to a patchwork of rapid shifts and surprising twists accompanied by distorted apparitions of post-Yugoslavian reality, blocks of noise and traces of trip-hop pop. She studied composition at the Academy of Music in Zagreb and the University of Music and the Performing Arts Graz with Beat Furrer, and media composition at the mdw – University of Music and the Performing Arts Vienna. Among other awards, she was a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Residence Program. Since 2010 she has been co-curator of the festival Dani Nove Glazbe Split in Croatia. She is co-founder of the Black Page Orchestra, an ensemble for radical and uncompromising contemporary music, and currently lives in Vienna. cargocollective.com/mirelaivicevic soundcloud.com/missbitterton
In »Penumbra« (the shaded region surrounding the dark central portion of a sunspot), I explore the enormous possibilities of a specific and unconventional contemporary chamber ensemble that often sounds more like a band. A patchwork of different fragments and contrasts, fast changes of form and tempo, groovy rhythms and polyrhythmic structures followed by extremely fast and virtuoso passages challenge the musicians not only as ensemble performers but also as soloists. By using electric guitar effects, I have expanded the ensemble’s sound palette with the possibilities of the electric guitar, from the distorted to the surreal. With musical gestures and their transformation via effects and unpredictable orchestrations, sounds and grooves come together here into a synthesis of different genres in a single sonic world.
»Iktsuarpok« was composed during the Lockdowns, a time of unpredictability, fluctuation and cacophony. »Iktsuarpok« stands for the frustrating wait for visitors. Or for someone to save our world. «Iktsuarpok« continues my artistic work in the field of electroacoustic music and analogue synthesizers and is composed and produced as a Minimoog quartet (3 Moogs as tape and Minimoog solo live). All four Minimoogs develop counterpoint of microtonal melodic lines, extremely dense movements that simulate ›screaming‹ sirens with their hard-shelled sound, culminating in an explosion/detonating cluster to awaken ›eyes wide shut‹ of the world.
Misha Cvijović (b. in Serbia) is a composer and pianist. She was a composition student of Eun-Hwa Cho at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin and composes orchestral and chamber music, electroacoustic music, works for opera and music theater, as well as theater and film music. Misha Cvijović’s compositions have been performed throughout the world, including at SONIC MATTER Zürich, MaerzMusik and the Cannes Film Festival by many contemporary music ensembles and orchestras, such as Zone Experimentale Basel, Zafraan Ensemble and Orchestra Radio Television Serbia. Misha Cvijović was awarded a fellowship from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe 2021 and from the Musikfonds 2021 for her trio Splitsignals Berlin. She lives in Berlin. www.mishacvijovic.com
Viktoriia Vitrenko is an exceptionally versatile musician who has achieved success as both conductor and singer. As a choral conductor and fellowship holder of the DIRIGENTENFORUM, she has also conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Choir. As a singer, she has performed at the National Opera of Ukraine and at the Opera Forward Festival in the Netherlands, as well as at numerous European festivals including NOW! Festival and Gaudeamus Muziekweek. Cultural and social exchange plays a central role for Viktoriia Vitrenko. She sees herself as a mediator for Ukrainian culture and an active promoter of contemporary music. Collaborating with artists outside the field of music is an integral part of her creative work. To this end, she has launched several projects and ensembles, including InterAKT (*2017), a cross-art initiative focusing on socio-political and technological issues. She lives in Stuttgart, Germany. viktoriia-vitrenko.com www.mixedsoundpersonnel.com
Illuminations here signifies the desire to illuminate what is deliberately forgotten or ignored; what is kept »in limbo« in an undefined place; what makes someone a social and political orphan. »Illuminations« songs give voice to such orphans: the work is based on their own statements, part protocol, part energetic speech. The songs themselves are protests: voiced polyphonically in recordings, loudly through megaphones, and shared and documented internationally via smartphones. The three »Illuminations« songs do not seek out subtle zones of expression, but turn piano keys into a chorus of trombones and electric guitars. The music for this work has its origins in the tradition of the political protest song and the rock song. Illuminations is also the title of a volume of essays by Walter Benjamin, which served as a latent source of inspiration.
Ying Wang (*1976 in Shanghai, China) studied composition with York Höller, Rebecca Saunders, and Johannes Schöllhorn at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, as well as electronic music composition, and then contemporary music at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt. In 2012, she was at IRCAM in Paris. In addition to the fellowship of the German Academy Rome in 2020, she has received many other grants, including from the SWR Experimental Studio and the Edenkoben Herrenhaus. Her numerous awards include the Giga-Hertz Prize in 2013, the IRINO PRIZE for chamber and orchestral music in Tokyo in 2014, and the Heidelberger Künstlerinnenpreis in 2017. Ying Wang has collaborated on her compositions with renowned orchestras such as the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, and the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, Helsinki. She lives in Berlin. www.yingwang.de soundcloud.com/ying-wang-composer
In 2018, a book by the famous Ukrainian poet Iya Kiva entitled »A Little Further from Heaven« was published in Kiev with a preface that read: »Notes on the concept of limbo«. Indeed, in the summer of 2014 – from the time of her escape from occupied Donetsk – is when this poet began her own limbo. The way it probably began for Paul Celan. The way of reading »Signs of Presence« – goes through the sound. We remember forgotten melodies of lullabies, children’s songs, or old cries… we approach the instrument… we listen to the world around us, cling to its vines, its trees… we listen to all of its signs, we recognize ourselves within them. (I am writing this program note in Kiev on December 31, 2021. In the morning I read once again in the newspaper about the buildup of Russian troops along the borders of Ukraine… And that is a part of my »Signs of Presence«.)
Alla Zagaykevych (*1966) is a Ukrainian composer, performance artist, curator of electro-acoustic music projects, and musicologist. She studied at the Ukraine National Academy of Music in Kiev and attended the year-long course in composition and computer music at IRCAM (Paris) in 1995/96. Her oeuvre includes symphonic, instrumental, and vocal chamber music, electroacoustic compositions, multimedia installations and performances, operas and film music. In 2017, she was awarded the Golden Dzyga prize of the Ukrainian Film Academy as best composer. Since 1997, she has been a lecturer in the Composition Department of the Ukraine National Academy of Music in Kiev, where she founded the Electronic Music Studio. She has been the artistic director of Electro-acoustics Kiev since 2003 and the president of the Electro-acoustic Music Association of Ukraine since 2010. brahms.ircam.fr/en/alla-zagaykevych soundcloud.com/allazagaykevych
»Doyouhearme?« was created in collaboration with the Swiss singer Franziska Baumann. The work explores the liminal zones that arise between breathing, whispering, speaking, singing and the gestural energy of the voice and are integrated in a strong emotional context. How exactly this context is defined cannot be predicted in advance, since the soloist creates her individual sound environment with the loop machine, making the emotional component dependent upon each performance.
Anna Arkushyna (*1989 in Lutsk, Ukraine) writes solo and chamber works using electronics and experiments with non-standard instruments, while also musically employing uncommon objects. She studied at the Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music with Yevhen Stankovych, at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz with Beat Furrer and at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics Graz. Since 2020 she is a student in the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz with Franck Bedrossian. Her music is widely performed during the many international festivals and projects by ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern, and many others. She most recently received the Musikförderungspreis der Stadt Graz. www.annaarkushyna.com soundcloud.com/annaarkushyna
In an age of global instability, the threat of chaos looms. Or is the threat more spectral than real? The fear of chaos may simply be our response to living in a world controlled by powerful forces beyond our understanding. – Mark W. Scala, Chaos and Awe, 2018
Fear, Control, Deception, Discrimination, Struggle, and Survival. These are crucial topics for an artist of immigrant background, I personally relate to. The composition is based on recordings and samples from Buchla synthesiser with different frequency ranges, timbres and dynamics, human voice and speech, various percussion instruments and bowed instruments for sustained, drone-like sounds. The same visual parameters used for image interpolation will also be used to control sound. Chaos and Awe was the title of the exhibition of 50 paintings curated by Mark W. Scala at the Frist Art Museum. The artists in the exhibition dramatically reflect the effects of globalism, mass migration, mass control, radical ideologies, and complex technologies, forces whose unfathomable scale and powerful influence can frighten people. This exhibition has become an inspiration for me to create the current composition.
Mariam Gviniashvili is an Oslo-based composer and sound artist, born in Georgia. Her compositional focus is on investigating the role of spatiality in music whereby her artistic practice also extends to audiovisual works in which she explores the relationships between 3D sound and moving image. Gviniashvili completed her master studies in electronic music composition and electronic music media at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Franz Liszt Academy of Music and Tbilisi State Conservatoire. She ist he recipient of numerous awards including the Prix Ars Electronica and PRIX CIME and has been commissioned by Notam, ZKM Karlsruhe, Nordic Voices and KUPP. Her music is regularly performed at international venues such as Ars Electronica, Klingt Gut, New York City Electroacoustic MusicFestival and Ultima in Oslo. www.mariamgviniashvili.com www.mariamgviniashvili.com/#/work
