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The Swiss Museum and Centre for Electronic Music Instruments – a living archive

At only seven years of age the Swiss Museum and Centre of Electronic Musical Instruments (SMEM) already won one of the Swiss Music Awards’ three special prizes. The museum is located in Fribourg and allows to experience technology, history and practice of electronic music-making.

High shelves at the Swiss Museum and Centre for Electronic Music

Friedemann Dupelius
‘The award was a total surprise,’ says Victorien Genna, project coordinator at SMEM, ’we wouldn’t have imagined something like this for at least another few years. It’s wonderful to be a recognised Swiss institution.’ Which is not only recognised in Switzerland. In addition to guests from France and Germany, numerous fans from England, the USA, Japan, Australia and New Zealand travel to Fribourg to marvel at its impressive collection. SMEM exhibits some 5000 electronic musical instruments, including almost every conceivable type of device: samplers, drum machines, synthesisers, mixing consoles, effects units, amplifiers, recording devices, microphones – even software such as the first version of the now widely used programme Ableton Live from 2001 and the corresponding old computers on which it used to run.

The Hammond Novachord was produced between 1938 and 1942

The shelves rise high to the ceiling of a former brewery – now converted into an area for start-ups and cultural initiatives. But anyone who fears thick layers of dust on the keyboards can be reassured, SMEM sees itself as a ‘living archive’. All of these devices are not only professionally maintained, but can also be played. In the museum’s ‘playroom ’, a wide selection of different instruments is on display, including classics such as the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines. Visitors can book a session for little money and even record their own jams to take home.

A museum for kids and nerds alike

When asked whether SMEM actually makes a distinction between academic, ‘serious’ electronic music and its pop-cultural varieties, Victorien Genna asks what I actually mean by that – and thus gives an indirect, but clear answer. He is not a musicologist or composer, but joined SMEM as a philosophy student who enjoys playing with synths in his private life. ‘FM synthesis is a good example: it made its way from university laboratories to the consumer market and became world-famous with the Yamaha DX7 in the 80s. Here, the nerds get their money’s worth, you can really go into detail. But even five-year-old children or someone who turned 100 should be able to have fun.’

Children also have fun at SMEM

The first circuit ends on a train journey

The fact that SMEM exists at all is a lucky coincidence, as most of the collection comes from Klemens Niklaus Trenkle – an actor who has been collecting electronic instruments since the 1970s. So many, in fact, that at some point his landlord got fed up and told him to get rid of the stuff. On a train journey, he struck up a conversation with architecture professor Christoph Allenspach from Fribourg. Allenspach had had the idea of opening a music-related museum for years and so the first wiring was unexpectedly successful. The instruments soon moved from Basel to Fribourg, an association was founded and a team of volunteers put together. The museum opened in 2017 and not much has changed since then: The number of instruments is large, the budget small.
Victorien Genna of SMEM has produced a documentary series about instruments from the SMEM collection.

In addition to public funding and private donations, SMEM thrives on volunteers and their commitment, such as Victorien Genna, volunteered until he was recently given one of the museum’s three permanent positions. The volunteers repair instruments, mix concerts or take on bar shifts. The newly received prize is therefore worth more than gold, as the museum’s collection is constantly growing. But how are you supposed to filter out which delay module or wavetable synth will be historically relevant from a flood of new technical releases? ‘Sometimes you can quickly recognise technical revolutions,’ says Victorien Genna, referring to the Elektron Digitakt, released in 2017, ’it was instantly clear upon release, that it would become an important sampler for the 21st century. But often one can only speculate and gets to know after a few years.’ Klemens Niklaus Trenkle still buys new instruments for the museum himself. ‘He has a pretty good feel for what is or will be relevant.’

SMEM organises concerts, workshops and lectures – at least once a month. Several times a year, artists in residence are hosted in Fribourg for one to four weeks to experiment with instruments of their choice. There is no obligation to produce results, but something always comes out of it, which is then usually released on Fribourg’s label oos. In October, the label plans a release by Viennese musician Oliver Thomas Johnson, alias Dorian Concept, who worked with the Yamaha CS01 synthesiser at SMEM. The polyrhythmic meshes of percussive synthesisers begin to groove more and more with each new layer and the 200 beats per minute speed is not noticeable in this agile music. It is a living archive in which history is not only documented, but also actively shaped.
Friedemann Dupelius


Swiss Museum and Centre for Electronic Music Instruments (SMEM)
SMEM on Instagram
The online magazine of SMEM
Dorian Concept on Bandcamp
Klemens Niklaus Trenkle
The album Unconditional Contours by Legowelt, partly composed at SMEM

 

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Sound art by ‘Sonic Architect’ Merlin Modulaw

Merlin Züllig, alias Merlin Modulaw, describes himself as a ‘sonic architect’. Born in Zurich and now based in Paris, he studied composition and sound design in Switzerland and explores new artistic spaces with his combinations of acousmatics, 3D sound, sound design and pop references.

Merlin Modulaw © Andreas Lumineau

Friedemann Dupelius
‘Decorating a table is composing, a bouquet of flowers is a composition. To me, the term composition is very broad and sound design is a part of it’. Merlin Züllig, alias Merlin Modulaw, thinks a lot in terms of connections and associations. There is hardly a musical genre or creative activity that he does not see in connection with one another, which is something that became apparent from very early on in his biography, Merlin Modulaw is not yet 30 and belongs to a generation that socialised on online music platforms such as Soundcloud in the 2010s. This was where musicians (often from their teenage bedrooms) shared their tracks with the world without the help of record labels or distributors. Inspired by hip-hop production and electronic club music, Modulaw deepened his skills in composition and sound art by studying at the music academies of Basel and Bern. There he came in touch with contemporary and acousmatic music, music for loudspeakers without visible instruments, and immersed himself in the subject of 3D audio.

Sounds for spaces: The „Sonic Architect“

This is how the self-definition ‘Sonic Architect’ came about, as the terms musician, composer, producer, sound artist or sound designer were not enough for Merlin Modulaw to describe the broad bouquet from which his activities are composed. ‘Sonic Architect’ means, on the one hand, designing sounds and music for specific spaces, such as in the concert series “Spectres”, which Modulaw organises together with Axel Kolb in Zurich. Here, composers open up a wide variety of spaces with loudspeaker constellations – from large industrial halls to cellar vaults and art galleries.


Merlin Modulaw’s acousmatic compositions combine field recordings and synthesiser sounds, taking the listener to various imaginary places

Depending on both location and artistic intention, the loudspeakers are set up in a circle, directed frontally towards the audience or sometimes fill the walls and corners of the room with electronic-acoustic compositions that are specially mixed and staged for the specific rooms with their natural frequencies and reverberation times. The participating composers rotate from edition to edition. In December 2023, the ‘Spectres’ series was part of the Zurich Sonic Matter Festival. At the ‘Biennale Son’ in autumn 2023 in Valais, Merlin Modulaw spatialised the sound traces of other artists in an installation by Deborah Joyce-Holman, distributing the sound material across five loudspeakers set up in a row and on subwoofers under a bench for the audience. For him, this is also a compositional act in itself, even if he did not create the sounds himself.

Circle of eight speakers at Rindermarkt Zürich

But ‘Sonic Architect’ means even more to Merlin Modulaw: the sounds do not only create architecture, but also identities – they capture something specific from the indeterminate sound stream of the present and make it accessible. This can be applied to all of Merlin Modulaw’s musical activites, including his work as a mastering engineer, for example, when he gives other artists’ music the delicate polish that sets the scene for both their identity and his own – or as a sound designer who uses sounds to give movies or advertising clips their own atmosphere and identity.

‘I’m often annoyed by films with a distinctive soundtrack that is simply slapped on and tells you what emotions you have to feel. So I try to incorporate the musical information at the level of sound design and emotionally, i.e. directly in the scene. For example, a wind in the background might contain a minor chord that nobody consciously perceives as such, but which subtly colours the surroundings and creates a certain aura.’Merlin Modulaw created the sound design of an image video for the Zurich design brand Casella Meyer with his typical sound language

Sounds for voices: The Associator

The musical outcome resulting from this approach and workflow have made other artists curious to collaborate with Merlin Modulaw. It is often vocalists – singing, rapping, experimenting with their voice or with effects such as autotune – who want to clothe their voice in Modulaw’s sound. Nine of them found a place on the album Ignition, released in 2023. Merlin Modulaw’s work with vocalists is also very much about associations: ‘to me, the voice is a reference point that listeners can quickly orientate themselves by. I can then combine vocal elements that are often associated with pop music in the broadest sense with references from contemporary or electro-acoustic music and thus introduce experimental music to a different audience.’


The track ‘C’ is part of the album ‘Ignition’ and was created in collaboration with Californian rapper DÆMON.

These combinations of references – alongside technical innovations – are the means by which innovation takes place in Merlin Modulaw’s music. As a border crosser between the familiar and the yet-unknown, Merlin Modulaw has opened up several new spaces in recent years.
Friedemann Dupelius

Merlin Modulaw, Merlin Modulaw auf Bandcamp, Merlin Modulaw – Ignition (Album), Konzertreihe Spectres in Zürich, Deborah Joyce-Holman, Axel Kolb

neo-Profiles:
Merlin Modulaw, Festival Sonic Matter

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Sound art and music by Martina Lussi: It happens very casually

Lucerne born Martina Lussi studied art and through listening she got into producing sound art and music herself. She explores nature and everyday life with microphones and an audio recorder and taking her impressions back to the studio, she condenses her listening experiences into installations, performances and studio albums, as well as field recordings and soundwalks.

Friedemann Dupelius
At the beginning of our Zoom conversation, Martina Lussi admits that she feels a bit disorganised. She is currently working a lot in an art library, so she is lacking time to listen and engage with sounds, which is a very important aspect to her. “Listening is something that happens very slow. You can’t just quickly listen to something – you have to start from the beginning and absorb it, otherwise you lose the context. Who really has time to listen these days?”

Martina Lussi © Calypso Mahieu

To get in the right mood for our conversation, she has turned her routine route around Lake Lucerne into a soundwalk this morning – in other words, a walk during which you actively listen to your surroundings. She reads out her listening log to me like a shopping list: “Trolleys, conversations, a jogger running past, my jacket, a dog breathing, ship masts, a person imitating a duck…” We both realise that we can imagine the individual sounds, but that such a description lacks one thing: the spatiality and simultaneity of the scenery. “My music thrives on the fact that many different sounds combine and flow into one another. It’s like a stream in which sounds are suddenly very close, only to dissolve into something else again.”

Frogs or wood?
At the end of 2019, Martina Lussi spent a residency in the Brazilian rainforest, where she was able to immerse herself in an unknown soundscape. “Some of the sounds were unsettling because I didn’t recognise them, especially at night. There was a frog for example, that sounded like wood – someone had to explain that to me first.” Her composition Serrinha Do Alambari Soundwalk is based on an audio walk in the village of the same name.

Listening as a shared experience: Martina Lussi and her soundwalking group in the Brazilian rainforest © Karina Duarte

Footsteps of a group of people crunch on uneven ground and set the rhythm, over which one can hear various birds chirping. Gradually, a synthesiser rises like wafts of mist from the soundscape of the rainforest and merges into gentle tropical rain, until at some point the frogs chatter. Martina Lussi is not interested in reproducing the environment as it apparently sounds in reality – she adds artificial sounds and thus creates new sound spaces, such as dreamlike memories. She sometimes does not bother to cut out the wind that blows into the audio recorder. Some field recording purists would consider this a bad recording, but not Martina Lussi.


The composition Serrinha Do Alambari Soundwalk was released on vinyl in 2020 on the label Ōtium, along with a piece by Loïse Bulot.

Coat or birds?
On the contrary: she repeatedly incorporates unwanted background noises into her compositions. In her piece The Listener, these even become the sole material. It consists exclusively of sounds produced by coats. They became the focus of Martina Lussi’s attention while making recordings in nature as part of a research project on bird sounds: “You imagine it to be so idyllic, but early in the morning it’s often so cold that I’m freezing and have to keep moving. As I’m wrapped up in a thick jacket, it just resonates.” She realised that these sounds often sounded like the voices or even the beating of birds’ wings. She took four jackets, improvised with each one for ten minutes and used them to create a four-channel installation and composition.


The piece The Listener is part of the compilation Synthetic Bird Music and was released on tape in 2023 on the label mappa.

The 4-channel sound installation “The Listener” was launched in 2022 at the art space sic! Elephanthouse in Lucerne © Andri Stadler

Martina Lussi does not consciously sharpen her ears with listening exercises before she goes into the field: “It happens very casually. When I go into the forest, I smell the oils from the trees, I can’t see far, I automatically enter an attentive state that I don’t have to prepare myself for.” As vividly as she talks about the Brazilian rainforest years later, it becomes clear that listening goes beyond the moment. It creates memories that last for a long time and that you can draw on even in more turbulent times.
Friedemann Dupelius

Portrait Martina Lussi © Johanna Saxen

Martina Lussi, Martina Lussi on Bandcamp, Serrinha Do Alambari (Vinyl), Research project „Birdscapes“, Artspace sic! Elephanthouse in Luzern, Compilation: „Synthetic Bird Music“

Upcoming events:
18.05.2024 – Concert in Tbilisi (Georgia), Left Bank
24.05.2024 – Moa Espa, Geneva (Soundwalk)
18.06., 19:30 Uhr – Dampfzentrale Bern (WP Proximity with Ensemble Proton, + open rehearsal on 17.06.)
23.06., 17 Uhr – Postremise Chur

neo-profile: Martina Lussi

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Between circuits and percussions

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.

 

Der Schlagzeuger Martin Lorenz, konzentriert mit diversen Schlegeln in der Hand. Foto: Heidi Hiltebrand
Portrait Martin Lorenz © Heidi Hiltebrand

 

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.”

 

Martin Lorenz hat ein Gerät, vielleicht ein Mischpult, auf dem Schoß und widmet sich vertieft den bunten Kabeln und Knöpfen.
Portrait Martin Lorenz © Florian Japp

 

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

 

 

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With historical synthesizers towards the present sound

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.

Composer Svetlana Maraš, Photo: Branko Starčević
Composer Svetlana Maraš ©Branko Starčević

 

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.

 

Die Komponistin Svetlana Maraš dreht an den Reglern des EMS Synthi 100
Svetlana Maraš is working with the EMS Synthi 100 at the Electronic Studio of Radio Belgrade.

 

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

 

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Mushroom meshwork of sounds and relationships

Friederike Kenneweg

The MaerzMusik festival will take place in Berlin from 18 to 27 March 2022. One of its main focusses will be the work of Éliane Radigue on the occasion of the composer’s 90th birthday. Friederike Kenneweg spoke with French-Swiss musician François J. Bonnet, who’ll be sound director for all of Radigue’s electronic works performances during the festival.

 

Schwarzweissbild von den abstrakten Verbindungslinien eines Pilzmyzels
Maerzmusik 2022 Artwork

 

When shaping the 2022 programme, curators Berno Odo Polzer and Kamila Metwaly, kept in mind both the visible and invisible relationships that hold us all together, in music and beyond. They used the mushroom mycelium’s root-like structure as a metaphor. What we commonly call mushrooms, are in fact mainly the fruiting bodies, but the fungus also includes the multifaceted interconnections of its roots, some of which extend over large areas underground. The influence that these connections have on their environment is still largely a mystery to science.

Such an unmanageable network of connections is also formed by the festival’s events, which run through districts, flats, cafés, pubs and venues, linking places as diverse as the Philharmonie, the Zeiss-Großplanetarium in Prenzlauer Berg and the Kulturquartier silent green in Wedding.

 

Composer Éliane Radigue will turn 90 in 2022. Photo: Éleonore Huisse

The image of a subterranean network also fits the music of Éliane Radigue, whose complete electronic works will be presented live at Maerzmusik. At first it seems like an infinite, almost static sound surface, although subtle changes take place in the various musical layers.

 

Engage in a different perception

Sound director François J. Bonnet recommends that those who attend the concerts fully engage with the perception of these subtle changes, as they allow open up a completely new horizon to the listeners. Bonnet is in charge of 17 events, covering the composer’s works from 1971 to the year 2000. Bonnet, who is an active musician himself under the name Kassel Jaeger, is the current director of INA GRM(Institut national de l’audiovisuel / Groupe de Recherches Musicales). He thus presides over today’s version of the legendary institution that Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer, founding fathers of “musique concrète”, brought into being in the 1940s. Radigue also worked with Schaeffer and Henry for a long time. Today, her name is primarily associated with her work with the ARP 2500 synthesiser, of which she was one of the pioneers in the 1970s.

 

François J. Bonnet. Ein bärtiger Mann im blauen Pullover vor einer Mauer aus brüchigem Stein. Foto: Éléanore Huisse
François J. Bonnet is sound director for Éliane Radigue’s complete electronic repertorie during Maerzmusik 2022. © Éléanore Huisse

 

François J. Bonnet is an expert of Radigue’s also because he published an extensive edition of her electronic works with the composer herself, leading to a close relationship of trust between the two. Furthermore, he gained a precise sense of how the composer’s procedures and what matters to her in each individual composition.

 

The underrated importance of sound direction

Bonnet actually decides for each venue how the playback position should look and filters out certain frequencies or emphasises them during the performance – entirely according to the room’s acoustics. Even if the works are final recorded mixes, he still enhances parts during the performance or gives them a certain sparkle. This influence can lead to the same piece sounding completely different according to the venue. Once, Éliane Radigue herself told him after a concert that she had perceived her own piece with completely different ears that day.

 

Acoustic music, orally transmitted

After a long period of working with the synthesiser, from 2000 onwards Éliane Radigue turned to purely acoustic music, which she developed with her respective “musician partners”. Occam Océan was created in 2015 in collaboration with Paris based ensemble ONCEIM (l’Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisation Musicales).

 


Éliane Radigue, Occam Occéan, Premiere 26.9.2015, Festival CRAK Paris
The extraordinary aspect is that there is no written version of the orchestral work, as the piece is transmitted orally and through listening. In a further joint transmission process, the ensemble ONCEIM passes the composition on to Klangforum Wien and performs Occam Océan in a joint performance in the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonie.

 

Furrow, groove, path

As part of this concert, the ensemble ONCEIM will also perform Sillon for 27 improvising musicians by Patricia Bosshard (2018). Sillon means furrow, groove, path. The repetitive piece is about movements from the individual voice to the overall sound and about connecting lines between various instrument groups through musical material, timbre and sound.

 


Patricia Bosshard’s Foumilierewith Orchestre du Grand Eustache (2018) also focuses on shared practice and listening rather than on written scores

 

MaerzMusik will be the starting point of tracks like Sillon to also run through people, through the city, through the world – music as a mushroom meshwork that connects us all in one way or another.

Friederike Kenneweg

 

Berno Odo Polzer, Kamila Metwaly, Zeiss-Großplanetarium Berlin, silent green Kulturquartier Berlin, Philharmonie Berlin, Occam Océan, Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaefer, INA GRM, Ensemble ONCEIM, Klangforum Wien

MaerzMusik 18.3.-27.3. 2022

Selected / mentioned concerts:
21.3.2022 Zeiss-Grossplanetarium: Éliane Radigue: The Electronic Works 1: Trilogie de la Mort I. Kyema (1988)

22.3.2022 Zeiss-Grossplanetarium: Éliane Radigue: The Electronic Works 4: Adnos (1974)

23.3.2022 Philharmonie Berlin: Occam Océan, Klangforum Wien und Ensemble ONCEIM

 

neo-profiles:
François J. Bonnet, Patricia Bosshard