The tenth edition of the festival presents us with an occasion to talk once again about the closely coordinated feminist, political and musical ideas that form the basic concept of the festival and characterize its aims, one of which is to contribute to a revision of music history through a rediscovery of classical composers, avant-gardists and pioneers. Equally important is the discovery of contemporary female, queer and non-binary protagonists who can change the way we listen. This not only generates new ways of seeing, thinking, and listening, it also shows that music and music history have always been diverse and non-binary. Joining in the discussion are several researchers as well as musicians and composers participating in this year’s festival.

Maja Bosnić is a composer and performer. She is drawn to impossible missions, absurd solutions and uncertain outcomes. 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 for the Zabuna Association, an organization she founded to support and develop the contemporary music scene in Belgrade.

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. 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.

Vera Grund has been an associate of the Detmold/Paderborn Musicology Seminar since 2017 and is working on her habilitation on the topic of early opera history as popular culture and euergetism. Her most recent publications are »Naturalezza | Simplicité – Natürlichkeit im Musiktheater« (ed. together with Claire Genewein and Hans Georg Nicklaus, transcript 2019) and »Gender und Neue Musik« (ed. together with Nina Noeske, Bielefeld: transcript 2021).

Jasmine Guffond is an artist and composer working at the interface of social, political, and technical infrastructures. Her practice spans live performance, 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. Guffond’s work has been exhibited internationally. In 2021 she completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Katja Heldt is a musicologist and journalist specialized in contemporary classical music. She is currently writing her doctoral thesis on female pioneers of electronic music at Lunds University in Sweden. She studied musicology at the University of Cologne, Université de Montréal and Humboldt University Berlin. Heldt writes for a variety of music magazines and works for the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music.

Anna Schürmer is a media cultural scientist and music journalist with a focus on new and electronic music. She received her doctorate with the thesis »Klingende Eklats. Skandal und Neue Musik« /»Sounding Outrages. Scandal and New Music« (Transcript 2018). Anna Schürmer conducts experimental sound research not only in her research and teaching, but also as a journalist. Since April 2021, she has been teaching and researching as bridge professor of ›Music and Media‹ at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. 

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 and composition at the Berlin University of the Arts. Among other influences, Schweiger’s compositional concept is inspired by spectral music.

Bettina Wackernagel studied music theater directing with a focus on contemporary music and electronic media. As a director, she was responsible for countless world premieres, including at the Salzburger Festspiele, the Munich Biennale, and the Ars Electronica Linz. Since the 1990s she has produced festival formats that examine current trends in electronic music and art through social discourse. She founded the festival Heroines of Sound in 2014 and to this day continues to be responsible for its artistic direction.

The artist group Sonoscopia from Porto is participating in this year’s festival with a sound art exhibition that was created in cooperation with Sonoscopia, Heroines of Sound and the sound artists and sound researchers group Errant Sound. The exhibition can be seen at Errant Sound’s project space, not far from the festival venue. The panel will provide the opportunity to talk with participating Portuguese artists about the exhibition, about the artist group Sonoscopia*, and the situation of women in the Portuguese music scene. The panel will be completed by Stefanie Egedy from Brazil, whose sound installation »Bodies And Subwoofers (B.A.S.): Ext« can be experienced during the festival at Radialsystem.

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. She holds a PhD from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and is currently a researcher at the University of Minho (CECS).

Patrícia Caveiro is a cultural manager with special interests in the area of strategic planning. She has a degree in art history (FLUP) and attended the master’s program in artistic studies, curating and museology (FBAUP). Together with Gustavo Costa, she curates and produces Sonoscopia. As a freelancer, she collaborates with various organizations and artists from the visual and performing arts.

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, subwoofers and their spatial presence. Egedy co-runs the label COISAS QUE MATAM (THINGS THAT KILL). She is part of Creative Europe’s SHAPE+ artist roster for 2022-2023.

Laura Mello is a composer-performer from Brazil. She holds degrees in Social Communication, Composition and Conducting, Electroacoustic Music Composition and Music Aesthetics. Her work focuses on a play with motifs taken from spoken language and field recordings. In her instrumental compositions, sound installations, interventions and performances, she explores the human perception of acoustic phenomena in relation to the spoken language. Laura Mello lives in Berlin and is a member of the Berlin-based sound art project space Errant Sound.

Angélica Salvi is a Spanish harpist and composer. Her extensive artistic career includes collaborations with composers such as Takayuki Ray and Heiner Goebbels. 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). She is the principal harp teacher at the Conservatory of Music in Porto and a founding member of FMFX (Female Effects Collective).

Vuduvum Vadavã 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.

*Sonoscopia is an association that creates, produces and promotes artistic and educational projects focused on experimental music, sound research and its interdisciplinary intersections. Since its inception in 2011, Sonoscopia has presented in several countries as distant as the United States, Lebanon, Japan, United Arab Emirates and Uruguay. Sonoscopia has a residency center in downtown Porto and is partially funded by República Portuguesa – Cultura/Direcção-Geral das Artes.

The guitar has lived in the shadows of both classical and new music to this day. It was only via its detour through pop and rock music and the new sonic spheres opened up by its electrification, that the guitar, now the electric guitar, found its way into current avant-garde trends. In the process, its playing style has been expanded, as have the possibilities of sound modulation and distortion, while in sound installations, the sculptural and iconically distinct character of the instrument is what often comes into play. This year’s Heroines of Sound festival will focus on current approaches to an instrument rich in tradition. The panel provides composers with an opportunity to explain their music to the audience.

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. She 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.

Catherine Lorent combines visual art with music and performance. She experiments with a number of instruments, 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 PhD in art history from the University of Luxembourg.

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. She is a member of the Akademie der Künste and teaches electroacoustic composition at the Berlin University of the Arts.

Maya Shenfeld is a composer and musician. In her practice, she explores the intersection between modes of musical production used in popular, electronic, and experimental music. She 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.

Tine Surel Lange is a composer and interdisciplinary artist. Her art takes form as experimental instrumental and electroacoustic compositions, performances, audiovisual works, and installations. 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.  

Sarah Johanna Theurer is a curator who focuses on time-based art practices and techno-social entanglements. Her work at Haus der Kunst München ranges from commissioning emerging artists, organizing live events and symposia to producing historical surveys and retrospectives. She previously worked for the 9th Berlin Biennale. Theurer sometimes works as a dramaturg and frequently publishes in catalogues and magazines.

The beginnings of microtonal music date back to the early 20th century. Whereas in classical instrumental music, considerable effort is required to produce quarter tones and microtones, in electronic music the sound can be shaped as a continuum and organized as desired. But whether produced with classical instruments or electronically, microtones and microtonal compositions open up new worlds of sound and teach us new ways of listening. This year’s edition of the festival presents current perspectives on microtonal music. During the panel, invited musicians and composers will explain their compositions and talk about their ideas and experiences with microtonality. The guest will be the Berlin-based Canadian composer Chiyoko Szlavnics.

Pascale Criton 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 and 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.

Friederike Kenneweg is a musician, journalist and writer. Her main point of interest is at the intersection of writing, language, voice, sound and music. As a sound designer, she accompanies readings with live sounds. She has received several fellowships and awards for her writing and has been working since 2012 as a freelance radio journalist in the field of new music, primarily for SWR2 and Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

Marina Khorkova studied composition at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the State University of Music and the Performing Arts Stuttgart. In addition to scholarships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, 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.

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.

Chiyoko Szlavnics is a Canadian composer and visual artist. She began composing after graduating from university, and studied privately with James Tenney. She developed a compositional approach based on self-generated drawings. The drawings enabled her to conceive and realize a kind of music that promotes the perception of certain psychoacoustic phenomena (beating and combination tones) through a sensitive setting of ratio-based pitch material in long sustains and extended glissandi, and careful orchestration.