On the magic of collaboration

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.

 

Die Komponistin Elnaz Seyedi, lächelnd, schwarz gekleidet und vor grauem Hintergrund.
Portrait of the composer Elnaz Seyedi. © Roya Noorinezhad

 

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 SeyediDonaueschinger Musiktage 2023, Ensemble Ascolta, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Caspar Johannes Walter, Hochschule für Musik BaselAnja 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 SeyediDonaueschinger MusiktageLucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra

 

 

 

Musique de creation – An insider tip from Geneva at GdN Basel

Gabrielle Weber: Interview with Jeanne Larrouturou, Ensemble Batida & Diĝita: Romandie @GdN Basel_1, 26.11.10

The instrumentation is unusual… and convincing: three percussionists and two pianos. Even more unusual is the collaboration with the cartoon collective Hécatombe. At Diĝita, Geneva-based ensemble Batida combines music with comics. On November 26, at the Gare du Nord, focus of the “Romandie” season.

Basel’s Gâre du Nord, the Station for New Music’s main focus extends over three seasons, with three times three concerts. In the long run, this will build solid bridges to the other Swiss language region, which is of high importance, especially now, as the ensembles of the French-speacking part of Switzerland cannot perform there due to the regional lockdown.

Neoblog portrays the guest ensembles and neo.mx3 accompanies the concerts’ live broadcasts together with RTS.
Episode one: Ensemble Batida Genève: A portrait

Gabrielle Weber
I met Jeanne Larrouturou, percussionist and co-artistic director, for a conversation via Zoom during the Geneva Lockdown. Larrouturou comes from France, grew up in Geneva, and after her studies at the Haute école de musique Genève (HME), she specialised in contemporary music at the Musikhochschule Basel. Since then she has been acting as bridge-builder between the two regions’ music scenes.

Ensemble Batida: Concert Le Scorpion © Pierre-William Henry

Batida’s lineup was rather accidental. Larrouturou explains that the ensemble originated as a “classic Bartok formation”, referring to Bartok’s 1937/38 sonata for two pianos and percussion. In 2010 four of the ensemble members formed for a concert at the HME and further joint performances followed. When a percussionist left for abroad, Larrouturou stepped in and stayed. The core formation has since then remained unchanged: three percussionists Jeanne Larrouturou, Alexandra Bellon and Anne Briset complement Viva Sanchez Reinoso and Raphaël Krajka on piano.

A stroke of luck, because many new works were created for this unique lineup. On one hand by composers, on the other hand by collective composition of the ensemble’s members themselves, which also began by chance. During a project with a dance company, the choreographer asked Batida to compose something. “This is how the first composition commission happened and we carried on composing together afterwards. Next came music for a project with a puppet theatre,” says Larrouturou.

Ensemble Batida, Haïku, collective composition 2013

“The way we compose strongly draws on experimentation. We start from an idea of general structure, a concept and then we “go”: we play, we listen to each other, record ourselves, listen to the recordings together. We structure, organise and record “. A kind of creation that combines improvisation and notation. Generally, the improvisational elements are retained.

musique de création

Batida does not want to get stuck in a set musical genre. “We see ourselves in contemporary music, but don’t like what’s behind that label very much” says Larrouturou. In France there are several more fitting designations: ‘Musique de création’ is the most appropriate for her: “it’s sufficiently open, but at the same time excludes traditional ‘contemporary music’.”

Ensemble Batida: Mean E, kollektive Komposition 2013

The ensemble has hardly had performances in German-speaking Switzerland so far. After the Concours Nicati in Bern 2014, performances at the festival Zeiträume Basel and in Andermatt followed. Quite the opposite to the Romandie , as well as abroad, where the ensemble performed at many festivals, toured France, Russia, Portugal and Cyprus. Another tour – with Diĝita – was planned in the USA (but had to be postponed due to the pandemic).

Larrouturou explains the meagre exchanges between language regions as follows: “I have been living in Basel for about four years now and my network is in Basel, Geneva and Lausanne. It never ceases to amaze me how little the scenes know each other. At the university in Basel, I noticed that there were fundamental differences in aesthetic orientation. Certain very highly considered musicians in Basel, are hardly known in the French-speaking part Switzerland. The French-speaking part is more closely linked to France, while the German-speaking part is to Germany,”.

Larrouturou curates the Lausanne concert series Fracanaüm together with composer Kevin Juillerat, a fellow student from Basel, based in Lausanne. They try to transcend such divisions. “We don’t even ask ourselves where someone comes from and invite musicians from our network from both regions. I’m convinced that these small initiatives create and develop long term relationships”.

But Batida is also about building bridges between divisions. Most projects are transdisciplinary and developed in collaboration with other artists, with dance, puppet theatre, architecture, video or comic artists.

The collaboration with the Geneva-based drawing collective Hécatombe is ongoing, since their first joint project in 2016.

Ensemble Batida & Hécatombe: Oblikvaj, collective composition 2016-2018

“In our first project Oblikvaj (2016-2018), it immediately became apparent, that we were on the same wavelength. Each of the five members of Hécatombe created a graphic score, in form of a 24-page black and white comic strip and Batida reacted with collective compositions. It worked brilliantly”. Concerts with live encounters followed.

Diĝita is primarily about the joint creation process. “In the summer of 2019 we took a 14-day retreat in an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t bring any instruments, but collected and recorded existing sounds, for example big machines, tractors and engines.

Diĝita, Trailer ©Gare du Nord, Batida & Hécatombe

The title Diĝita stands on one hand for the ‘fingers’, on the other hand for digital vs. analogue. The recorded and sampled sounds refer to the digital realm, while the music performers work with their fingers. The musicians perform within a transparent cube, with screen-display walls onto which 3D videos by the drawing collective are projected: life-size comic figures on the videos overlap and thus alienate the real bodies of the musicians in the cube.

Diĝita was able to give a concert in Lausanne on 31 October: “It was an extreme experience as we all knew that we wouldn’t be playing live again for a while, so we enjoyed the moment even more,” says Larrouturou. The Diĝita tour with follow-up concerts in Geneva was unfortunately interrupted by the lockdown.

During our conversation, it turned out that Batida is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. A party with partners and audience is planned in Geneva, but due to the pandemic it will not take place before 2021.
Gabrielle Weber

Ensemble Batida Portrait ©Batida

Ensemble Batida: Klaviere: Viva Sanchez Reinoso, Raphaël Krajka
Percussion; Jeanne Larrouturou, Alexandra Bellon, Anne Briset
Diĝita: Video: Giuseppe Greco, Ton: David Poissonnier

Gare du Nord: Batida & Hécatombe: Diĝita, 26.11.20, 20h
(because of lockdown in Basel, they played twice for 15 persons, combined with a Livestream for everybody else)

Ensemble Batida, FracanaümKevin Juillerat, haute école de musique genève – neuchâtel, Hochschule Musik Basel, Hécatombe,

broadcast RTS:
l’écho des pavanes, 20.11.20, rédaction Anne Gillot, Gespräch mit Désirée Meiser, Intendantin Gare du Nord
broadcast SRF 2 Kultur:
in Musik unserer Zeit zu neo.mx3, 21.10.20, Redaktion Florian Hauser / Gabrielle Weber

neo-Profiles: Ensemble Batida, Gare du NordAssociation Amalthea, Kevin Juillerat