Swiss Contemporary Music
Marc Kilchenmann doesn’t like to repeat himself, what he appreciates is delving deeper when he takes on a subject. For his piece Murhabala, he focussed the women’s struggle for freedom in Iran. In the musical form, overtone and undertone structures meet and clash, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in dissonant frictions.
A portrait by Friederike Kenneweg
The soprano and composer Sabina Meyer has found an inspiring musical base in Rome, where she can express her versatility. She combines improvisation with jazz, contemporary music, baroque music and electronics. Meyer also writes her own songs for the duo Cry Baby, in which she plays electric bass.
A portrait by Friederike Kenneweg.
Continue reading “Sabina Meyer – a voice for Scelsi and songs”
Hermann Meier (1906-2002) was a school teacher in the village of Zullwil in the so-called Schwarzbubenland and had five children to feed. Despite all this, he always found time to work on his unusual compositions – even if initially merely destined to sit on a shelf, as he experienced no major successes or performances during his lifetime. His legacy has been analysed by musicologist Michelle Ziegler.
An interview with Friederike Kenneweg.
Friederike Kenneweg
‘It all started when I first heard Hermann Meier’s during a concert back in 2011,’ recalls Michelle Ziegler, ‘I was immediately fascinated by it.’ Back then, Tamriko Kordzaia and Dominik Blum played Hermann Meier’s Thirteen Pieces for Two Pianos from 1959.
‘These are thirteen separate sections with very different characters. At that time, I was already working on the realisation of artistic ideas in music, and I found this to be consistently implemented here.’
The Thirteen Pieces for Two Pianos reveal the multifaceted nature of Hermann Meier’s music, which can be loud and direct, but also delicate and sometimes humorous. Tamriko Kordzaia, Dominik Blum, Concert 19th of May 2011, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, produced by SRG/SSR.
When Michelle Ziegler learned that the composer’s works were sitting largely unexplored at the Paul Sacher Foundation and that there all kinds of graphic plans were to be discovered there, she found her dissertation project. “That ended up being the focus of my project: Meier’s piano music and his pictorial notation.”
Notes in school notebooks
In order to be able to read Meier’s notes, Michelle Ziegler even learnt a special shorthand writing. The composer, who had unlimited access to exercise books as a primary school teacher, constantly recorded his thoughts in this form: on music, contemporary art and the progress of his work.
‘You could almost call him a graphomaniac,’ says Michelle Ziegler. The large number of exercise books, plans and sheet music that are now in the Paul Sacher Foundation could keep one busy for a lifetime.
At odds with his time’s music scene
The fact that, despite his constant productivity, Hermann Meier received little recognition during his lifetime is due to his unconventional compositional path. He had been studying twelve-tone music on his own since the 1930s and initially found a sympathetic teacher in Wladimir Vogel after the Second World War. However, he increasingly turned away from it, first finding an even more radical approach to serial composition and finally, inspired by the visual arts of Piet Mondrian and Hans Arp, moving on to work with sound surfaces. From 1955 onwards, Meier worked with graphic plans in which he visually sketched the structure that he later translated into musical notation.
His way of composing encountered little understanding at the time. Although endeavouredly searching for performance opportunities, he only received rejections, but nevertheless continued to compose unwaveringly, although only for the shelves.
Sound as canvas
Keyboard instruments play a central role in the Meier’s work, as he was himself a very good pianist. A work that Michelle Ziegler particularly appreciates is the 1958 piece for two pianos (Hermann Meier-Verzeichnis HMV 44).
“This is a stunning piece in my opinion. I can listen to it again and again and always hear different things.”
In the piece for two pianos HMV 44 written in 1958, here played by von Tamriko Kordzaia and Dominik Blum, Hermann Meier experimented with three structural elements dots, lines and areas.
Late recognition:Klangschichten’
The fact that Meier’s efforts to have his works performed did not bear fruit was also due to the fact that they were too difficult for the instrumentalists of the time. It is therefore not surprising that the composer turned to electronic music. In 1976, at the age of seventy, he indeed succeeded in realising his first work for tape, Klangschichten, in the SWF experimental studio – with which he was awarded a prize in December of the same year.
A new style in his later years
From 1984 onwards, pianist and composer Urs Peter Schneider took an interest in Hermann Meier’s music and premiered some of his works as part of the ‘Neue Horizonte Bern’ concert series.
Piano piece for Urs Peter Schneider, played by Gilles Grimaitre
With the late opportunity to see his instrumental pieces performed, Hermann Meier once again developed a new style. Michelle Ziegler discovers this, for example, in the Piano Piece for Urs Peter Schneider from 1987.
Concert HKB Bern 2017, SRG/SSR Eigenproduktion.
“The rhythm as well as the element of duration became very important. By then he was already over eighty and changed his composing considerably because he became even more fascinated by other aspects.”
In the meantime, Hermann Meier’s work has received a fair amount of attention. In 2018, his piece for large orchestra and piano four hands from 1965 was premiered at the Donaueschingen Music Festival. Michelle Ziegler particularly enjoys concerts like this. “It’s important to me that Hermann Meier’s music doesn’t just remain on paper, it should be heard.”
Friederike Kenneweg
The Paul Sacher Stiftung has organised and restored the composers archives and compiled a catalogue. Composer and bassoonist Marc Kilchenmann made the sheet music available as a facsimile edition published by aart Verlag.
Pianist Dominik Blum has recorded the complete works for piano solo by Hermann Meier from 1948 onwards.
Michelle Ziegler published the volume Musikalische Geometrie. Die bildlichen Modelle und Arbeitsmittel im Klavierwerk Hermann Meiers and, together with Heidy Zimmermann and Roman Brotbek, the catalogue for the exhibition Mondrian-Musik. Die graphischen Welten des Komponisten Hermann Meier.
Sendung SRF Kultur:
Kontext, 10.1.2018: Hermann Meier, ein lang verkannter Musikpionier, Autor Moritz Weber
neo-profile:
Hermann Meier, Urs Peter Schneider, Gilles Grimaître, Tamriko Kordzaia, Dominik Blum, Marc Kilchenmann
Saxophonist, composer and event organiser Christoph Gallio has been shaping the Swiss and international free jazz and new improvisation scene for almost 40 years. In this interview with Friederike Kenneweg, he reveals how he moved from improvisation to composition and what role poetry plays in the process.
Friederike Kenneweg
Young Christoph Gallio (*1957) used his first self-earned money to buy a soprano saxophone and taught himself to play. Even though he later spent a year at the Basel conservatory and at some point even completed a degree, he has remained true to this attitude of self-taught musician who simply does it and finds out how best to do it – as an improvising musician in free jazz, among other things, as a composer, as an organiser and as the operator of the PERCASO label.
Looking for new impulses
In order to develop further on his unconventional path, Christoph Gallio has always looked for new stimuli on the outside.
“It’s the crux of the self-taught artist, at some point one has to do something new. I can’t always be alone with my idiosyncrasies. I always need new inputs.”
After his time as a saxophonist in the Swiss jazz scene and after musical encounters with greats such as Irène Schweitzer or Urs Voerkel, for example, a change was needed.
From improvisation to composition
“I always and only improvised freely, going into free jazz to some extent. But at some point that no longer satisfied me, as there was this danger to go round in circles, without getting any further and only ever come up with the same things.” In contrast to the many irretrievable moments of improvised music, Gallio wanted to create something that could be repeated – and began composing. At first, he mainly wrote for his own band projects, such as the trio Day&Taxi, which has been with him for 35 years. Over time, commissioned works for other artists were added.
On Day&Taxi‘s 2019 album Devotion, poems by Friederike Mayröcker served as a source of inspiration for Christoph Gallio, with bassist Silvan Jeger taking on the vocal part.
Merging miniatures into a whole
Christoph Gallio prefers to use texts as starting point for his music – especially poetry, for example by Robert Filliou or Gertrude Stein.
“If I have a text as a basis, it just works. Without a text, it’s much more difficult for me to compose.”
In the piece The Ocarina Chapter for string trio and voice, which the Mondrian Ensemble premiered with baritone Robin Adams in June 2022, one characteristic of Gallio’s music is particularly evident: his work with miniatures. These arise from his preference for short, lyrical, often humorous texts, which inspire his compositions.
“What I like about small pieces is the seemingly unimportant, the everyday. Why not do funny things too, why not bring humour into the music, why is most music so strict and serious, why do certain people who make music take themselves so seriously?”
In The Ocarina Chapter (2021), Christoph Gallio brings together poems by Annina Luzie Schmid (*1983), Markus Stegmann (*1962) and Peter Z Herzog (*1950).
Each miniature is a picture in its own right
In The Ocarina Chapter, thirty miniatures, some purely instrumental, others with words set to music, are put together in a sequence of almost forty minutes. The rapid changes this requires are a particular challenge for the performers.
“The musicians have to practise a lot with these miniatures. Each one being a picture in its own right. One has to be sung one way, the next differently, there has to be shouting, then whispering, without much transition time in between.”
Freedom for interpreters
Christoph Gallio finds the right sequence for the individual sections by putting the pre-sketched miniatures together differently on the computer until everything sounds right. The space between the individual parts is also important in order to create the desired effect. Particularly in those places, Gallio does not dictate everything to the performers of his pieces for the performance, but leaves the exact arrangement up to them.
At the premiere of The Ocarina Chapter, violinist Ivana Pristašová specified the length of the pause between the sections. “Ivana simply conducted it and made decisions about how long the ensemble should wait and when it should continue, showing the right instinct.”
The volume levels are not notated in the composition either; the ensemble had to make its own decisions about the piece’s dynamics.
“I want to give the musicians a lot of freedom in the hope that they will enjoy the piece. This works fully when they realise to have the freedom and the opportunity to work it out the way they please.”
Needless to say, Christoph Gallio takes the same kind of freedom for himself again and again on his journey.
Friederike Kenneweg
Robin Adams, DAY&TAXI, Silvan Jeger, Gerry Hemingway, PERCASO, Ivana Pristašová, Irène Schweitzer, Urs Voerkel, Annina Luzie Schmid, Markus Stegmann, Friederike Mayröcker
neo-profile:
Christoph Gallio, Petra Ackermann, Karolina Öhman, Mondrian Ensemble
At Donaueschingen Music Festival 2023, ensemble Ascolta will premiere “Dunst – als käme alles zurück” by Elnaz Seyedi, commissioned by the ensemble in tandem with author Anja Kampmann.
Elnaz Seyedi’s portrait by Friederike Kenneweg.
Friederike Kenneweg
For Elnaz Seyedi, composing always means collaboration. Born in Tehran in 1982, she studied, among others, with Younghi Pagh-Paan in Germany and Caspar Johannes Walter at the Hochschule für Musik Basel and draws a lot of energy from the very different encounters and constellations that her work entails. Dunst – als käme alles zurück is Seyedi’s second collaboration with Ensemble Ascolta.
“That’s an advantage because the musicians know what they can expect from me and thus engage with my work in a different way.”
Happiness in search of sounds
This led to special moments of happiness during the preliminary rehearsals for Seyedi’s Donaueschingen debut, when she searched for the right sounds for the piece in individual rehearsals with the ensemble’s musicians. For example with percussionist Boris Müller.
“He kept pulling out more things like shells and stones and in the end the whole room looked as if it had been full of children playing for eight hours. I went home with material for three pieces. It’s just the most beautiful thing and gives me a lot of energy.”
Glasfluss is another of Elnaz Seyedi’s works that emerged from a close collaboration, in this case with percussionist Vanessa Porter in 2022.
Taking the risk of composing together
Elnaz Seyedi has a special kind of collaboration with composer Ehsan Khatibi, who also comes from Iran and with whom she has been friends for a long time. When they happened to be room-mates in a hotel during a visit to the Impuls Festival in Graz in 2019 and spent a lot of time together, they realised how similar their musical approach was and how fruitful their discussions about concerts and music turned out to be. Hence the idea of composing together, which led to their very first common project, a draft for a call for proposals by the Neuköllner Oper Berlin for a chamber opera, which had an astonishing impact: “At first we only had a small idea, but in three weeks we had a finished concept, including lighting and stage design.” Even though the draft was not accepted, a first step had been taken.
Honesty as precondition
With their draft for a realisation of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, in which philosopher Johannes Abel joined their planning team, they won second prize in another composition competition. While their joint composition ps: and the trees will ask the wind for double bass, Paetzold flute, violin, objects, audio and video – in which they artistically processed Iran’s socio-political events – was premiered at Bludenzer Tage für zeitgemäße Musik in 2021.
“We eventually found a way to be just as critical of each other as we are of ourselves. Our common work is based on honesty, which can sometimes lead to difficulties, but if we disagree, we keep going until we are both satisfied and in the end, we come up with a much better solution.”
In Die Zeiten – Versuch (über das Paradies) for baritone and piano, premiered at the Lucerne Festival in August 2023, Elnaz Seyedi wrote the music to a text by Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou.
Working in new places
Elnaz Seyedi also draws inspiration from the various location she gets to visit during her travels. That’s why she is particularly fond of residency scholarships. The composer believes that getting away from everyday life allows you to suddenly recognise the beauty of the familiar that would otherwise remain buried in the daily routine – a thought that she incorporated into Postkarte (Moorlandschaft mit Regenbogen) , which was composed for the Ensemble S201 from Essen in 2016. In 2020, a residency scholarship from the Bartels Fondation took her to Basel’s Kleiner Markgräflerhof, while in 2021 she spent a few months at the Künstlerhof Schreyahn in Lower Saxony, she was amazed at how productive she had been there.
Her orchestral piece A Mark of your breath was inspired by her stay at Künstlerhaus Schreyahn – above all by the vastness of the sky and the landscape in Wendland.
‘Dunst’ – world premiere in Donaueschingen 2023
This autumn, Elnaz Seyedi is once again working at a different location thanks to a residency at Künstlerhaus Otte in Eckernförde, where she can bring her work to the local audience through concerts as well as film evenings. She also just completed “Dunst – als käme alles zurück”. For the concert programme Echoräume by ensemble Ascolta at this year’s Donaueschingen Music Festival, two artistic tandems consisting of a composer and a writer have formed and – with complete freedom in their approach – each one of them developed a joint work. The piece by Elnaz Seyedi and author Anja Kampmann for two voices and ensemble is about the aesthetics of the fragment and the transition between language and music…
…and who knows what compositional ideas Elnaz Seyedi’s stay in the town on the Baltic Sea will generate.
Friederike Kenneweg
Premiere Donaueschinger Musiktage: Saturday, October 21,2023 at 11:00, Mozart-Saal DonaueschingenEchoräume with Ensemble Ascolta: Elnaz Seyedi and Anja Kampmann Dunst – als käme alles zurück; Iris ter Schiphorst and Felicitas Hoppe: Was wird hier eigentlich gespielt?
Elnaz Seyedi, Donaueschinger Musiktage 2023, Ensemble Ascolta, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Caspar Johannes Walter, Hochschule für Musik Basel, Anja Kampmann, Ehsan Khatebi, Vanessa Porter, Ensemble S201, Neuköllner Oper, Künstlerhaus Otte Eckernförde, Künstlerhof Schreyahn, Bludenzer Tage für zeitgemäße Musik, Lucerne Festival, Impulsfestival Graz, Bartels Fondation
Sendung SRF 2 Kultur:
Musik unserer Zeit, 2.6.2021: Nach neuen Meeren – die Komponistin Elnaz Seyedi, Redaktion Cécile Olshausen
neo-profiles:
Elnaz Seyedi, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra
Roland Dahinden wears many hats: composer, trombonist, sound artist, improviser, conductor… During this year’s Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, he will present works by the US composer Anthony Braxton, with whom he has a long-standing collaboration.
Friederike Kenneweg
Filled with music in different ways from morning to night – that’s how one can imagine Roland Dahinden’s everyday life. Two hours are always reserved for his trombone etudes, to which he has devoted himself daily for 40 years now. A time of full concentration on his instrument, in which nothing else has room. “It’s something I look forward to every day,” says Dahinden. “And after that, I look forward just as much to opening the score I’m currently composing, rehearsing, or whatever else is on the schedule. So everything has its place.”
Dahinden/Kleeb a long-time duo
When at home, there is also usually piano to be heard, as his wife, pianist Hildegard Kleeb, is practising for the next performances. The two have been playing together as a duo since 1987, but also in various trio constellations, for example with percussionist Alexandre Babel or electronic musician Cameron Harris. Both pursue their respective solo careers in different ways, but also play together in completely different projects or constellations.
“We talk about music when we get up in the morning and often still are when going to bed at night,” says Roland Dahinden. “That’s very precious, to share this enthusiasm with someone for so long and live it together.”
Panorama for trombone and piano by Alvin Lucier – 1993 – played by the duo Dahinden/Kleeb
Encounters with Anthony Braxton, Alvin Lucier, John Cage
Kleeb and Dahinden experienced a very formative time together in the USA during the 1990s. From 1992 to 1995, Roland was able to work as an assistant to Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan University and get to know their special approach to sound, improvisation and jazz. The fact that this stay was possible at all was thanks to the intercession of none other than John Cage, who composed the piece Two5 for the duo Dahinden/ Kleeb in 1991.
Conducting in Prague
His relationship with Anthony Braxton and the precise knowledge of his work, moving between set music and improvisation, led Roland Dahinden to rehearse some of Braxton’s pieces from the Language Type Music series with the Prague Music Performance Orchestra in 2021. The ensemble, which moves between composed contemporary music, improvisation and jazz, was so satisfied with the collaboration that they asked him to be their permanent conductor. The 55 musicians in the ensemble all have their own musical projects and bring their own approaches to the table. Bringing them together to create an overall sound is always a challenge, says Dahinden – but one that he is only too happy to tackle.
Anthony Braxton in Darmstadt
This year, the PMP Orchestra, conducted by Roland Dahinden, is focusing on the world premiere of a monumental work by Anthony Braxton: the opera Trillium X. The four-and-a-half-hour multimedia opera, which Braxton worked on for over five years, consists of four acts and deals with the effects of turbo-capitalism – with global catastrophes, nuclear threats and the coexistence of humans and robots. After the premiere to be held on August 1st in Prague, the ensemble will travel to the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music to record this great work. At the pre-opening concert in Darmstadt, the Orchestra, conducted by Dahinden, will perform a version of Braxton’s Language Music and Roland Dahinden will also perform as a trombonist in Thundermusic a new piece by Anthony Braxton, premiered by an ensemble put together especially for the occasion.
After this eventful summer, Roland Dahinden will continue to work on his own compositions. One thing is certain: everyday life in the Dahinden/Kleeb household will continue to be filled with music, however it sounds. And the next exciting challenge is just around the corner.
Friederike Kenneweg
Roland Dahinden Hildegard Kleeb PMP Orchestra Wesleyan University Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt
Termine:
5. August 2023: Language Music with Anthony Braxton and the PMP Orchestra. Conductor: Roland Dahinden
7. August 2023: First night of Thunder Music by Anthony Braxton, with Roland Dahinden playing the trombone
Neo Profile:
Roland Dahinden Hildegard Kleeb Alexandre Babel
Cécile Marti is both composer and sculptor. Being able to pursue these two activities makes her life balanced. On April 3rd 2023, her accordion quartet Spectra will be premiered by the Société de musique contemporaine Lausanne.
Friederike Kenneweg
“I like to emerge out of absolute silence and I try to maintain this silence for half the day if possible,” says Cécile Marti when we meet at noon for an online conversation. Her mornings are usually dedicated to composing. “Back then, when I came to composing, it grew out of absolute silence and I seek that experience again every day.”
From silence to composition
Cécile Marti had to find her way from silence back to sound after a stroke of fate hit her. Initially, as music-loving young woman, she had a completely different career in mind and wanted to become a violinist.
“I had focused my entire life on the violin, from childhood onwards there were only the violin and the profession of becoming a violinist for me.”
But when she suffered a stroke during her studies that made it impossible for her to play the violin, a long period of letting go followed.
“I had to go through deep worlds and hit rock bottom before I was able to rethink, reinvent and recreate my life from scratch.”
Success with bubble trip
Out of this process, she discovered the composition as a way of continuing to express herself musically, although in a completely different way. She studied with Dieter Ammann, Georg Friedrich Haas and Julian Anderson and soon had her first successes – for example with her orchestral work bubble trip(2004/2007), with which she won the international composition competition at the 9th Weimar Spring Festival for Contemporary Music in 2009.
In Switzerland, bubble trip was premiered in 2010 by the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra.
Quarter tones with the accordion
Cécile Marti has just completed the work Spectra for four accordions, which will be premiered by Ensemble Xamp at the beginning of April. The special feature is that two of the ensemble’s accordions are built in a way that they can produce quarter tones. Cécile Marti has used this opportunity to explore natural tone specters, as she had done in previous works.
Dancing Spectra for sextet from 2018, for instance also relies on natural tone specters as starting point.
Auch in für Sextett aus dem Jahr 2018 nahm Cécile Marti bereits Naturtonspektren zum Ausgangspunkt.
Stones in the afternoon
Cécile Marti devotes her afternoons to stone sculpture, which she discovered when she turned to composition.
Visual design runs in the family, her father worked as graphic designer and was constantly drawing drafts and sketches, while with her ceramist mother, she was often able to follow the process of creating clay pieces. “I grew up in her workshop, so to speak, and was allowed to witness how she shaped pots and bowls and how they were baked to come out of the kiln in all kinds of shapes and colours. That was very exciting.”
Today, she shapes sculptures from hard stone herself – an always challenging process that requires great concentration.
Processes and trajectories in stone and sound
The interaction between the two art forms Cécile Marti devotes herself to on a daily basis also finds its way into her works. In Five stages of a sculpture (2019) for ensemble and two solo violas, for example, five musical movements are presented opposite five different stages in the development of a sculpture. The ensemble symbolises the materiality of the stone, to which the viola voices gradually lend a new form.
Five Stages of a Sculpture by Cécile Marti, played by Ensemble Multilatérale.
Water Crystals from 2020 takes as its starting point various structures of water crystals that researcher Masuro Emoto photographed in different corners of the world in the 1990s. Violin and piano musically explore the hexagonal crystal structures in twelve aphoristic miniatures. Twelve white marble sculptures take a spatial-visual look at the same theme.
Cécile Marti, Water Cristals for violin and piano, 2020, Video 2021 ©Martin Messmer
Cécile Marti has found something fulfilling in her two fields of activity. “It’s just something wonderful and I want to be able to pass on and share this exciting experience” she says. Because shaping and designing also has something self-empowering about it.
“It’s about the form and shaping of our lives. Giving shape and form to our own lives, also in the sense of thinking life for oneself and shaping it from within, the self-determined shaping of our own lives from the bottom up.”
Friederike Kenneweg
Konzert: 3. April 2023, 19:00/20:15; Société de musique contemporaine Lausanne, Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne (HEMU)| Utopia 1 | Rue de la Grotte 2 | 1003 Lausanne: Das Ensemble Xamp spielt Werke von Cécile Marti und anderen Komponist:innen.
Cécile Marti, Steinskulpturen von Cécile Marti, Dieter Ammann, Julian Anderson, Georg Friedrich Haas, Ensemble Multilatérale, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, Ensemble Xamp
Neo Profile:
Cécile Marti, Dieter Ammann, Georg Friedrich Haas, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, SMC Lausanne
From January 26 to 29, Basel festival “SPIEL! Games as critical practice” explores the critical potential of playing. Composer Michel Roth curated the festival.
Friederike Kenneweg
Anyone who happens to talk to Michel Roth about playing can’t help discovering that it’s not just one single subject, but a multidimensional thematic field that opens up. For one can play with very different things: words, things, thoughts, sounds, colours or instruments… A game sets rules and creates its own world for its duration, whether it is music, a computer game, role-playing game or a board game. Those who see themselves as players in such a world look for rules to play by and each player has the possibility to influence the game within the space given to him or her, but the rules by which a game is played can also be changed – revealing a sudden philosophical or political dimension. It is true that playing can serve as an escape from the world and lead to a certain escapism. But it can also develop a critical, even world-changing potential.
Mary Flanagan’s “Critical Play”
Michel Roth found this idea formulated particularly succinctly in the writings of American game designer Mary Flanagan, which he came across during his research on games and play. He was particularly impressed by Flanagan’s 2009 book “Critical Play. Radical Game Design”, in which she emphasises the critical potential that can lie in the setting of games from the designer’s point of view. Which images, clichés and ideas should be reproduced, which ones should be changed? In what realm of possibilities should the players stay during the game? How games are designed can also influence real life and how we see it and perhaps even: what we want to change in it.
Hopscotch
Mary Flanagan will be a keynote speaker at the festival in Basel. and also present her mapscotch project in Theater Basel’s foyer. The project is based on the chalk drawing and playground game “Hopscotch”. Visitors can define their personal squares and the foyer’s floor becomes an individual hopping playground during the entire festival.
Sound and structure of the pinball machine
Another phenomenon that has long fascinated Michel Roth is slot machines. For ZeitRäume Basel in 2021, he designed a “game hell” in which the soundscape of pinball machines significantly determined the sound.
No wonder that such machines will also make a guest appearance at the festival. The former Theater Basel ticket office will host pinball machines and other games for the audience to try out (and listen to). In a lecture performance in collaboration with double bass player Aleksander Gabrys, Michel Roth will deal with the pinball game once again under the title Pinball Etudes, but this time by transforming a double bass into a pinball machine and preparing the strings with movable balls. Normal instrumental playing is no longer possible, but action and sound now also depend on where the balls roll. What exactly will happen can neither be composed nor rehearsed.
In the piece Räuber-Fragmente after Robert Walser, Michel Roth applied game theory to a composition for the first time, putting Walser’s novel Räuber into a kind of play configuration. A free improviser is on stage and free to intervene in the play whenever he or she feels like doing so, like a kind of spoilsport.
Play and composition
The festival also presents a variety of works by composers who have explored the game subject from different points of view. For example, Bernhard Lang has been working on a series of works entitled Game since 2016, in which the instrumentalists are given a playing space defined by a fixed set of rules, which they can then use freely. GAME 3-4-3 and Game ONE by Bernhard Lang will be featured in Basel. In Homo Ludens (2019), Mike Svoboda offers the players a choice of five settings, each of which with its own set of rules, while in her percussion piece Poker, Roulette (2020), Sarah Nemtsov explores the contrast between gambling instinct and gambling addiction – two principles that seem very close to each other and yet involve completely different energies.
Mike Svoboda’s Homo Ludens divides the musicians into two teams. Do they also compete against each other while making music? Recording from the first night of the piece, Gare du Nord, March 2019, played by Camerata Variabili and Mike Svoboda und Lucas Niggli as guest musicians.
Contrast, clash, encounter
Michel Roth consciously decided not to limit the thematic width that goes hand in hand with the festival theme, but to let approaches from game design, musicology, performance art, composition and pedagogy collide against or with each other. He is particularly curious to see whether the different target groups will relate to other areas. Will the gamers perhaps become hooked to new music? Will everyone play Mapscotch together in the foyer? Will visitors also meet completely uninvolved people at the Real World Audio Game on Theaterplatz? Will they all participate together in the Jeu sonore, to which Sébastien Roux and Clément Canonne invite the audience?
The festival itself becomes a space of possibility that invites the audience to play and make decisions in many different ways. Whoever gets involved in this mixture of lectures, concerts, installations and interactions can experience something intellectually, sensually and playfully – depending on where the pinball rolls.
Friederike Kenneweg
Festival “Spiel! Games as critical practice” from 26th to 29th of January 2023, in the Foyer Theater Basel, Musikakademie and Jazzcampus.
Bernhard Lang, Sarah Nemtsov, Sébastien Roux, Clément Canonne, Marko Ciciliani, Mary Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design,
Broadcast SRF Kultur:
neoblogpost 2.9.2021: Infinite game worlds, Auhtor: Jaronas Scheurer über about “Spiel Hölle”, project by Michel Roth
neo-profile:
Michel Roth, Mike Svoboda, Aleksander Gabrys, sonic space basel
Martin Lorenz started out as drummer and percussionist but his curiosity led him first to experiment with LPs and eventually with synthesizers, turning more and more to composion.
With the synthesiser trio Lange/Berweck/Lorenz, he will be playing the KONTAKTE Festival in Berlin as well as the Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zurich in September.
Friederike Kenneweg
Tall and slender, Martin Lorenz looks as if he always needs to bend down a little. When describing his search for special sounds, how the sound of gravel on a driveway or the one of an elevator door closing can be produced with synthesizers, his face lightens up.
Such enthusiasm for sound research is also necessary when working as drummer or percussionist in contemporary music.
Searching for the right sound material
Often percussionists don’t only play the usual percussion instruments, but need to find the necessary objects for the right sound – stones, pieces of wood, cups, etc. – a particular piece of music needs. They thereby take on a great deal of responsibility for how a piece sounds in the end, because composers do not always specify what they have in mind or what pitch a certain drum or even a stone should actually have.
The constant search for new sounds also led Martin Lorenz to explore the possibilities of LPs. During his own turntable performances, he cuts into the records with a knife, so that very specific rhythms and loops emerge when playing it back.
Cuts into vinyl
What is recorded on the cut record is of course decisive for how the loops sound in the end, so it was obvious for Lorenz to have records with his own sounds – and as a consequence he got involved with synthesizers and also founded his own label DUMPF Edition in Zurich, releases his own as well as other people’s experimental music. Actually, he still prefers LPs, but as a small label, relying on vinyl only hasn’t really been much fun lately, says Lorenz.
“There waiting times are too long and there are often delivery problems again, it’s not reliable and finally releasing a record can take ages.”
Lorenz doesn’t dwell on problems for long, however and rather looks for ways to dissolve frustrations and make them fruitful – which can be seen in his path towards composing. Time and again, he felt a certain disappointment when the ensemble in which he was employed as a percussionist commissioned works from composers and the results they presented did not meet his expectations.
“At some point I said to myself, if I have such precise ideas about a piece, maybe I should just write them and compose my own pieces.”
Feedback and spatial sound
A series of works by Martin Lorenz for instruments and live electronics called “Oscillations”, focusses on the feedback arising when instruments are recorded live in space and played back, resulting in complex structures of sound layering.
In 2021, the piece Swift Oscillations was written for the newly founded Eastern Swiss ensemble Orbiter, with Martin Lorenz himself on vibraphone.
Swift Oscillations by Martin Lorenz – 2021, performed by Ensemble Orbiter at Kultbau St. Gallen.
In addition to his work as percussionist and composer, Martin Lorenz has become increasingly involved in electronic sound production, live electronics and analogue as well as digital synthesizers. With his 2014 “Reviving Parmegiani” project, he finally entered the complex world of historical performance practice of electronic musical works together with pianists Sebastian Berweck and Colette Broeckaert. Performing electronic music again at a later date with other performers is often not that easy as sometimes the synthesizers used are no longer manufactured, there are no updates available, or the computer programme that was used doesn’t run on new devices.
Historical Performance Practice: Stries by Bernard Parmegiani
As the performers are often unaware of the problems that might arise in the future, they make no or inadequate records of what sounds they have set and what synthesizers or electronic effects they have used. In “Reviving Parmegiani” the 1980 piece Stries by French composer Bernard Parmegiani (1927-2013) was to be made playable again. Parmegiani had written the piece for the Paris synthesiser trio TM+ and the notations of the piece as well as a recording that could serve as reference were of reasonable quality. Nevertheless, the three performers had to embark on a detailed search to find out how the respective sounds had been produced and how they could be reproduced again at present times.
“In some places we still haven’t found what and how TM+ did exactly,” says Martin Lorenz. “Sometimes it’s just some badly wired spot of an analogue effect or synthesiser – that will remain a mystery forever.”
The lengthy and at the same time highly fascinating work on Stries became the starting point for the synthesiser trio Lange/Berweck/Lorenz, with whom Martin Lorenz still plays regularly. The three musicians Silke Lange, Sebastian Berweck and Martin Lorenz regularly commission compositions from contemporary composers in order to expand the repertoire for the unusual combination of three synthesizers.
It is important to them to work with the composers in the long term. “A first joint work like this is often more of a ”getting to know each other” process,” says Martin Lorenz. “Only when meeting again things like what can be expected of us, what we are good at, and what we might be challenged with become plain to see.”
Another thing that is plain to see, is that challenges are something that Martin Lorenz is always on the lookout for.
Friederike Kenneweg
Lange/Berweck/Lorenz, Silke Lange, Sebastian Berweck, Martin Lorenz, Akademie der Künste Berlin, KONTAKTE Festival,
Mentioned Events:
23.09.2022 Concert by Lange/Berweck/Lorenz at KONTAKTE-Festival, Akademie der Künste, Berlin
28.09.2022 Lange/Berweck/Lorenz at Kunstraum Walcheturm Zürich
Mentioned Recording:
“Bernard Parmegiani: Stries. Broeckaert/ Berweck/Lorenz”, ModeRecords, 2021
neo-profiles:
Martin Lorenz, Ensemble Orbiter, Kunstraum Walcheturm Zürich
Electronic music is composer Svetlana Maraš’ passion. She is Professor of Creative Music Technology and Co-Director of the Electronic Studio at the FHNW in Basel since September 2021 and her composition class will be in charge of SRF 2 Kultur’s radio concert of June 29, as part of the live broadcast “Classical and Jazz Talents” focus series.
Friederike Kenneweg
“Working at the university is of course a challenge in terms of time management, if one doesn’t want to give up the own artistic work,” says Svetlana Maraš.
But to her relief, the composer has found that the two activities don’t get in each other’s way, but rather complement one another.
„ In the creative process I always discover something new with the students – in this kind of interactions in this way of working, somehow it kind of works well together its not different it works in the counterpoint.“
The Serbian composer, born in 1985, had a rather classical musical education, with early piano lessons and music as well as composition studies. At the same time, however, there was always an interest in the possibilities of electronic sound processing, which led her to international workshops and courses and finally to a degree in sound and media art at the University of Helsinki’s Media Lab.
The piece Dirty thoughts by Svetlana Maraš was composed in 2016.
From 2016 to 2021, Svetlana Maraš was composer-in-residence and artistic director of the Electronic Studio of Radio Belgrade. One of the technical gems there is the EMS Synthi 100, an analogue synthesizer from 1971 of which only three were built. Maraš explored the possibilities of this instrument intensively and used it in several of her compositions, including her Radio Concert No. 2, which was created for the 2021 edition of the Heroines of Sound Festival in Berlin.
However, the EMS Synthi 100 is so large and heavy that it cannot be moved. The studio space, on the other hand, is so small that there is no room for a larger audience. So the live performance from the small studio space was video streamed to the festival venue.
While some parts of the piece are fixed, Maraš also creates spaces for herself within which she can improvise, taking advantage of the fact that having explored the instrument for so long, she knows it inside out. „It was not so much about what the instrument can do but what I wanted to do with it“.
Tribute to early electronic music
The historical synthesizers’ richness of sound is completed by the new possibilities offered by computer technologies, but Svetlana Maraš also used the old, analogue technique of tape loops in her radio concert – paying tribute to early electronic music, with which she always sees herself in a dialogue. Pioneers of electronic music such as Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram and Éliane Radigue actually come to mind and ear while seeing Svetlana Maraš turning the knobs and pushing the buttons of the EMS Synthi 100.
Before Maraš, only one woman had produced works at the Electronic Studio Belgrade: composer Lyudmila Frajt (1919-1999). As artistic director, Svetlana Maraš dedicated her own concert format to this pioneer in order to pay tribute to her predecessor as well.
Svetlana Maraš points out an important difference between then and now in the fact that analogue studio synthesizers are no longer used as workstations for pre-produced electronic music, but are mainly used live – even if this sometimes has to happen via the diversions of video concerts.
Svetlana Maraš, excerpts from Post-excavation activities, 2020
This year’s Heroines of Sound– Festival in Berlin will feature Maraš’ ‘Scherzo per oscillatori for Minimoog’ world premiere. In this case, however, the composer will not play herself, as the piece is interpreted by pianist Sebastian Berweck. This became a special challenge for the composer, as she first had to develop a special type of notation for the settings of the synthesizer.
in Berlin wird die Uraufführung von Scherzo per oscillatori für Minimoog von Svetlana Maraš zu hören sein. Hier spielt die Komponistin aber nicht selbst das Instrument, sondern das Stück wird von dem Pianisten Sebastian Berweck interpretiert. Das stellte in der Vorbereitung eine besondere Herausforderung für die Komponistin dar, musste sie doch erst eine Art der Notation für die Einstellungen des Synthesizers entwickeln.
Discovering the synthesizer’s sound simplicity
In developing the work, Svetlana Maraš was looking for a certain simplicity: starting from what the synthesiser brings and making it sound without complicating things too much. In the composer’s words: „Depending on what we regard by simple…. It can be small nuances, textures and sounds which are crackling and might sound like a mistake or one single sound which has a very interesting morphing and changes throughout time“
In electronic music, even the creation of something simple can be quite complex, as any determination of sound requires a multitude of decisions in the countless parameters that can be shaped within the instrument.
Electronic music on the radio
Dealing with the infinite possibilities that computer technology provides is also something that Svetlana Maraš teaches her students. When she talks about it, her enthusiasm is plain to see: ” It’s a quite rewarding experience. If I can help find them their voice and their way of working to create what they want, it gives you something back – it gives you a lot..”
This year in particular, the students have a very special opportunity to present their projects to the public at the end of the semester: a radio concert. SRF 2 Kultur’s focus week Classical and Jazz Talentsfrom June 26, to July 3, is dedicated to young musicians. On June 29, students from the FNHW’s Electronic Studio will present pre-produced electronic works created in collaboration with this event in Basel’s Meret Openheimhaus auditorium, live on the radio. Subsequently, the Noise Ensemble of the Electronic Studio Basel will improvise and Welcome to the Radio! a piece by Maraš’ student Dakota Wayne, consisting in a fictional talk show for which he also sampled jingles from Radio SRF 2 Kultur, will be premiered.
Dakota Wayne, Welcome to the Radio!, UA Basel 2022, produced by SRG/SSR
Svetlana Maraš sees this radio concert and performance within the framework of a certain tradition: “It helps the students to understand the importance of radio for electronic music. Even if radio as a medium has somewhat receded into the background lately: when one composes for the radio, it adds something to the music, changing the form, the dramaturgy, the choice of material… I’m glad we can have this experience this year and work on it together.”
Friederike Kenneweg
Mentioned broadcasts SRF 2 Kultur:
Classical and Jazz Talents: from June 26, to July 3 2022: SRF 2 Kultur’s focus week on young musicians: Vollständiges Programm als pdf
Neue Musik im Konzert, 29.6.22: Classical and Jazz Talents – Live from SRF-Auditorium, Redaktion Annina Salis: Livekonzert Contemporary electronic music with students of Svetlana Maraš – Electronic Studio Basel.
7th to 9th of July 2022: Heroines of Sound Festival in Radialsystem Berlin
8th of July 2022 first night of Scherzo per oscillatori for Minimoog by Svetlana Maraš, played by Sebastian Berweck
Svetlana Maraš, Dakota Wayne, Sebastian Berweck, Elektronisches Studio Basel, FHNW Basel
About the Electronic Studio of Radios Belgrade, Podcast about Ljudmila Frajt
neo-profile:
Svetlana Maraš, Elektronisches Studio Basel, Tim Shatnyy, Dakota Wayne, Anton Kiefer, Cyrill Jauslin, Louis Keller, Isaac Blumfield, Janik Pokorny, Minh Phi Guillod