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World premiere in 100 years?

Music of the future – escaping the Zeitgeist this is the title of a project to celebrate SUISA’s 100th birthday. 40 Swiss musicians were asked to write down their ideas regarding music that will be premiered in a hundred years’ time: A greeting from the present for the year 2123 to hopefully mark SUISA’s 200th birthday. The project was presented at the Yehudi Menuhin Forum in Bern on 16 April 2024. Bettina Mittelstrass spoke to the musicians involved.

 

The composition by HYPER DUO is titled with the number of seconds from now until 2123—3,406,699,560. Here is a roto of HYPER DUO at a Vinylséance on November 21, 2020 © 2020 Pablo Fernandez.

 

Bettina Mittelstrass
Helena Winkelmann, the HyperDuo, Joke Lanz, Martina Berther, Patrick Frank, Annette Schmucki, Fritz Hauser and Nik Bärtsch – these are just seven of a total of 40 Swiss musicians whose music of the future ended up in an archive box in April 2024 without ever being heard. Hermetically sealed, this archive will be supervised by the Swiss National Sound Archives in Lugano for 100 years and displayed in the entrance area of the Città della Musica. The archive will hopefully not be reopened until 2123, when the music will be awakened from its slumber and played for an audience not even born yet.

Leo Hofmann describes his music of the futur in a graphically designed text.

How will Switzerland sound in 100 years?

How will Switzerland sound in 100 years? An initial answer could be lying dormant in the archive box. The answers were not easily found by the 40 respondents. Scepticism prevailed. What instruments will be available in 100 years’ time? Will there still be western musical notation? Wooden instruments? Or will climate change have killed off the trees? Against the backdrop of the planet’s dwindling resources, it is impossible to know whether we will “ultimately have to burn violins and boil strings so as not to freeze or starve to death”, says percussionist Fritz Hauser.

He therefore set his composition in Morse code – in the hope that these archaic signs will inspire people of the future to make rhythmic music, whatever the instrumentation.

 

Fritz Hauser transcribes his music of the future entirely in Morse code. Here is his Schraffur for gong and orchestra, Basel Sinfonietta 2010, an SRG/SSR in house- production.

 

Music as ambassador for interplay?

Despite all the scepticism about what music will mean or enable in 100 years’ time – it will probably retain two social functions, says Swiss-Dutch composer and violinist Helena Winkelmann: acting as ambassador for interplay and mediator as well as integrator of good energy. Another thing is likely to persist in human societies, namely “that people will continue to have problems living together in the future.”

Helena Winkelmann has therefore placed the instructions for a ‘music council’ of the future in the archive box. It is the musical version of a thousand-year-old concept, the “Council of Chiefs” of indigenous American societies. In a circle, musicians take on different functions – both musically and socially. There is – for example – a questioning voice, an inventive voice, a preserving voice, a warning voice, a narrative voice and a developing voice. “That’s also the magic of this whole circle, in the sense that it is the exchange of perspectives that really helps us move forward.”

 


Helena Winkelmann contributes to the archive box with instructions for a ‘Music Council of the Future‘. In Geisterlieder, a cycle based on poems in 18 European original languages accompanied by various instrumental groups, Helena Winkelmann also explores the overcoming of temporal and regional boundaries. World premiere on August 5, 2023, at the Church of Ernen, an SRG/SSR in house- production.

 

A spaceship full of perspectives and criticism of the present

“This little spaceship basically contains a cross-section of current Swiss music creation,” is how ethnomusicologist and curator Johannes Rühl, inventor of the project, describes it. New music, electronic music, jazz, pop and folk music are represented among the 40 composition proposals, as well as sound installations and crazy ideas such as music with mushrooms, whose amino acids can already be converted into sounds today. Another proposal takes the sound of melting glaciers and transports it in the form of DNA into a future in which there will presumably no longer be eternal ice in the Swiss Alps.The sound of melting glaciers transported into the future in the form of DNA.

 

The sound of melting glaciers is transported by Pablo Diserens into the future in listening to glacial thaw in the form of DNA. © Clément Coudeyre.

 

Most of the proposals submitted for the archive box were characterised by a sceptical and socially critical zeitgeist, confirms Johannes Rühl. The attempt to escape the zeitgeist was understandably bound to fail. “We obviously cannot get out of the now. You also get the feeling that there is a dynamic in development these days which did not exist in the past.” Is that true? We won’t be around in 2123 to find out. May those after us play “our” future music or not.
Bettina Mittelstrass

 

Zukunftsmusik – dem Zeitgeist entkommen: 100 Jahre SUISA. The original idea came from Johannes Rühl, ethnologist and curator of music programmes.
Città della Musica 

broadcasts SRF Kultur:
Zukunftsmusik, Passage, 12.4.2014: Redaktorin Bettina Mittelstrass

neoprofiles:
Helena Winkelman, HYPER DUO, Joke Lanz, Martina Berther, Patrick Frank, Annette Schmucki, Fritz Hauser, Leo Hofmann, Nik Bärtsch, u.a.

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Composing with mobile technology: Lara Stanic – media artist

 

Electronic composition, performance, sound art: Zurich-based composer, performer, media artist and flautist Lara Stanic is hard to categorise. In her concert performances, she combines media, instruments, objects and musicians’ bodies and refers to specific locations and contexts. In this interview, she gives an insight into the creation of her latest works for the Zurich Baroque Orchestra.

 

Lara Stanic in ‘waves’, Festival Rümlingen 2020 © Kathrin Schulthess

 

Gabrielle Weber
I meet Lara Stanic for a cup of coffee at her kitchen table on a snowy Saturday morning at the beginning of January. We talk about her latest composition ‘Du matin au soir’: it was written in summer 2023 for the Zurich Baroque Orchestra and consists of eight sound interventions that were performed between individual symphony movements by Haydn. The concerts took place at different times of day in various Zurich locations: the botanical garden, an outdoor swimming pool and in St Peter’s Church.

Lara Stanic generally uses electronic media for her pieces and often also integrates context-related objects. The selection of specific media is a process, says Stanic. “I let myself be inspired by the context, the performers, the instruments and the way they can be played. This generates sounds in my head and I conceive ways of playing.”

In Sonnenstand, the sound intervention to Haydn’s symphony Der Mittag, the musicians ‘play’ with round portable mirrors that produce sound using smartphones. The idea came from a childhood memory. “As a child, I used portable mirrors to catch the sunlight at noon and create shadows and light reflections on a nearby wall,” says Stanic.

Sonnenstand by Lara Stanic, from du matin au soir, composed for the Zurich Baroque Orchestra, premiered in Zurich in 2023. Botanical Garden and St. Peter’s Church, Zurich, Videos © Andreas Pfister and Philip Bartels.

 

In Sonnenstand, the musicians also capture sunlight with mirrors, but this time turning it into music. Mobile phones are attached to the back of the mirrors. Built-in motion sensors, microphones and loudspeakers capture the movements of the mirrors and convert them into sounds. Stanic explains that this creates a hybrid form of two the media, mirror and smartphone.

Sonnenstand thus also reflects a basic theme characterising Stanic’s artistic work: In electronic music, she is often bothered by the clumsiness of large, almost threatening loudspeakers and mixing consoles. By using mobile devices, she searches for lightness and mobility. Stanic also often appears as performer of her own works. She first tests what she develops on herself. “I always was and still am my best guinea pig,” she says.

Stanic first studied the flute, then music and media art in Zurich and Bern. She continues to play and teach the flute and sees it as her musical home. “My training as a performer and teacher provided me with a foundation and knowledge of compositional thinking. I am equally interested in creating sounds on acoustic as well as electronic instruments.” Her first access to music was through radio and television during her childhood in former Yugoslavia. Even back then, she was fascinated by the amount of emotions sound waves could trigger. The connection between music and electronics was therefore obvious, she adds with a laugh: “Of course, I didn’t realise it being about sound waves at the time.”

 

Lara Stanic Performance ‘Spielfeld Feedback’ 2003 © EDITION DUMPF – Florian Japp

 

Humour and playful lightness also characterise her works with everyday objects. In Kafi, another sound intervention, this time for Haydn’s symphony Der Morgen, an oversized Bialletti espresso machine becomes an instrument. Two concert masters brew coffee on stage and ‘play’ with the sounds of the bubbling. “When I get up in the morning, I make my coffee in a Bialetti machine. It sounds very nice and I always associate the smell of coffee with that sound. I remember the sounds and smells from my childhood. And then an orchestra always has to drink coffee during rehearsal breaks. So there’s a very practical side to it as well…”
Kafi, another sound intervention by Lara Stanic from Du matin au soir, composed for the Hayn Symphony Der Morgen, Zurich Baroque Orchestra, premiered in Zurich in 2023, at St. Peter’s Church, Video © Andreas Pfister, Renate Steinmann.

 

Kafi is all about transformation, the sound and aroma of coffee being transformed into music. In addition, there is an electronic extension of classical instruments, as the violin bows of the concert masters are equipped with motion sensors. They use them to touch the coffee machine like magic wands, which are then swung through the air. This amplifies the sound of the bubbling, spreads throughout the room and mixes with the beginning of the symphony. In her own words: “The violin bows become magic wands, which in turn transform the aroma of the coffee into music”.

The process behind it is very simple though. First there is the idea, then a sound, in this case the bubbling of the coffee and then she looks for solutions as to how this can be connected to the sound of the instruments. The performative actions of the concert masters form a bridge for the audience between the sounding everyday object and the instruments. Based on this simple principle, Stanic transforms everyday objects into music and leaves a lasting impression on my morning coffee.
Gabrielle Weber


Lara Stanic, Du matin au soir, Video collage of the eight sound interventions for the Zurich Baroque Orchestra on Haydn symphonies, world creation Zurich 2023, Video © Andreas Pfister, Renate Steinmann, Philipp Bartels.

Lara Stanic is co-founder and member of the trio Funkloch featuring also PR and SH, which invites six composers each year to an experimental studio concert broadcasted live on air, or the GingerEnsemble, a Bern-based composer-performer collective. She composes for soloists, ensembles and orchestras, as well as for her own performances, which she regularly performs at international festivals and has been a lecturer in Performing New Technologies at Bern University of the Arts since 2011.

FunkLoch celebrated its sixth anniversary on Saturday, 20.1.24, 17h at Kunstraum Walcheturm with works by Annette Schmucki, Daniel Weissberg, Svetlana Maraš, Dorothea Rust and Joke Lanz.

Features SRF Kultur:
MusikMagazin, 10.2.2024: Cafégespräch with Lara Stanic by Gabrielle Weber, editorial Benjamin Herzog.
Zämestah, 21.12.2020: TV-Portrait Lara Stanic
Musik unserer Zeit, 21.09.2013: Spiel mit urzeitlicher Elektronik: Das Ginger Ensemble, editorial Lislot Frey

neo-profiles:
Lara Stanic, Funkloch OnAir, Kunstraum Walcheturm, Sebastian Hofmann, petra ronner, Annette Schmucki, Daniel Weissberg, Svetlana Maraš, Joke Lanz, Neue Musik Rümlingen.

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Forging improvisation: Willisau Jazz Festival 2023

 

SRF-Video interviews of How Noisy are the Rooms? and Der Verboten

Since its foundation in 1975, Willisau Jazz Festival has been an important hub for improvised music. Every year in late summer, improvisers from all over the world gather together in the Lucerne hinterland, where they perform in intimate settings or as larger acts in the festival hall. SRF 2 Kultur portrays them every year in various programmes. This year, SRF Kultur music editors Roman Hošek and Luca Koch also conducted live video interviews with various bands and artists. Luca Koch presents two of the featured bands in our neoblog: Der Verboten and How Noisy Are The Rooms?

‘Der Verboten’: Antoine Chessex, Christian Wolfarth, Frantz Loriot, Cédric Piromalli

 

Luca Koch
Anyone who discovers the band name (Der Verboten) in a programme might immediately think of a white, round sign with a red border or even think the name is a typo. Does it mean “das Verbot” (prohibition) or “die Verbotenen” (the forbidden) or “Der Vorbote” (the precursor)? What appears to be grammatically incorrect originally arose from a joke, as the quartet featuring Christian Wolfarth, Frantz Loriot, Antoine Chessex and Cédric Piromalli rehearses in both German and French, including translation errors. The name has stuck, because who defines what is right and what is wrong? Like music, our languages are made up of rules and structures that can be broken. Der Verboten’s music of is free of rules, intertwined, and it’s precisely this interplay that drives the band.

 

Der Verboten: Refinement instead of innovation

Exploring new sounds or expanding the individual instruments’ sound is not the focus of the ensemble, they try instead to sonically merge and deepen their collective sound. In the interview, Christian Wolfarth repeatedly emphasises how important it is to find the right bandmates. This quartet is like an old friendship, even if they haven’t rehearsed or played on stage for a long time, they pick up exactly where they left things when they last met.

Time merging

In order for piano, drums, viola and tenor saxophone to grow into a single musical organism, the band needs one thing above all – time. The desired form of interwoven interplay only emerges during long improvisation sessions. “I think I can say that we manage to achieve it during every concert,” says Christian Wolfarth in the interview. The ensemble played a total of two pieces in their one-hour set at the Willisau Jazz Festival and the break in between served as an opportunity for everyone – especially for the audience – to catch their breath. Slow developments and barely noticeable changes meant that the audience in the concert hall kept wondering how Verboten had musically moved from A to B.

 


Christian Wolfarth and Antoine Chessex before their concert in a live interview at the Jazz Festival Willisau 2023.

 

The band performed on stage with the same calm and reflective approach as in a conversation. They transported me into their world of sound to such an extent that during the concert I no longer knew whether twenty or just two minutes had passed.

Another band that plays with the audience’s sense of time is How Noisy Are The Rooms? In contrast to Der Verboten, however, the minutes seem to run by, as their sound aesthetic is shaped by high tempos and high density of sounds.

 

‘How Noisy Are The Rooms?: Almut Kühne, Joke Lanz und Alfred Vogel

 

‘How Noisy Are The Rooms?’ likes to ask questions.

The trio featuring Alfred Vogel, Joke Lanz and Almut Kühne likes to ask questions: How much noise can a room tolerate or can music cause whiplash? Improvisation with lots of energy, punk aesthetics and fast interaction gives the listeners at How noisy are the rooms? concerts the feeling of being flung back and forth like balls in pinball machines. The trio’s creative musical anarchy on stage challenges the audience, sometimes even overwhelmingly. Alfred Vogel emphasises: “I don’t really mean to overwhelm people. Understanding follows listening. You just have to open your ears and, at best, it does something to you.”

Turntables and whistle notes

The driving rhythms of Alfred Vogel on drums with Almut Kühne’s vocal acrobatics lend How Noisy Are The Rooms?’s music an archaic flair, as percussion and voice are probably the oldest instruments known to mankind. Joke Lanz, looping and distorting sound samples with his turntables, brings a performative, electro-analogue and humorous component into play.

 


Alfred Vogel before the concert of How Noisy Are The Rooms? in a live interview at the Jazz Festival Willisau 2023.

 

Alfred Vogel wanted to become a rock star and this energy is still present in How Noisy Are The Rooms? but he is glad that he took a different path, as his current musical output is diverse and rich.

Post-musical hidden object image

The trio’s music consists of eclectic sounds and short, pointed phrases like in hidden object images. There are no clear structures, harmonies or tangible melodies in their soundscape. Nevertheless, the musical disputes between the three musicians conjure up images in the mind: I feel transported to a roaring metropolis or as part of a game animation.

 


How Noisy Are The Rooms? Video ©Denis Laner / Alfred Vogel 2021

 

With their density and abundance of individual musical parts, How Noisy Are TheRooms? capture the zeitgeist of today’s restless world.  Alfred Vogel explains in the interview: “Music or art should always reflect the world we live in. What is overwhelming? Today’s events are also overwhelming. Everything happens at the same time. Everything, everywhere, all at once. It’s the same in our sound”. How Noisy Are the Rooms? is this year’s edition biggest discovery for me at Willisau Jazz Festival.
Luca Koch

 

Cédric Piromalli, Christian Wolfarth, Frantz Loriot, Almut Kühne, Alfred Vogel, Sudden infant

broadcasts SRF Kultur:
Neue Musik im Konzert, 25.10.2023: Anarchie und Energie am Jazzfestival Willisau, Redaktion Benjamin Herzog.

neo-profiles:
How Noisy Are The Rooms?, Joke Lanz, Der Verboten, Antoine Chessex

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un projet est avant tout une rencontre…

Composer, performer and curator Alexandre Babel has been awarded one of the Swiss Music Prizes of the Federal Office of Culture 2021. The award ceremony took place in Lugano on September, 17 2021. In this interview, Babel explains his point of view on composition and curation and how he combines these two activities.

 

Portrait Alexandre Babel © Felix Brueggemann 2021

Gabrielle Weber
Alexandre Babel, percussionist, composer and curator, can be seen on avant-garde concert stages, at jazz festivals, in galleries and at art biennials. Based between Berlin and Geneva (his hometown), he combines classical avant-garde music, sound art, experimental improvisation and performance.  

There are as many ways of composing as there are composers, says Babel and he therefore prefers to define composition as “the organisation of sounds in time and space”. Curating is also close to this understanding of composition. “Same here, it’s all about setting existing sound objects in motion in a certain place at a certain time and then connecting these objects with other objects.  

Composing and curating are different aspects of the same activity. Babel creates, conceives, stages, networks and interprets.  

Alexandre Babel, born in Geneva in 1980, first found his way to jazz through drum lessons in Geneva. He then specialised in New York with jazz legends such as Joey Baron or Jeff Hirshfield and played in various formations. “What fascinated me about jazz was not just the aesthetics, but rather how musicians interacted to create music. Mixing repertoire and improvisation: that was the basis of making music for me.”  

Also being attracted by the classical avant-garde, Babel soon switched to classical percussion and, back in Europe, found his way to composition. John Cage, Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier, Heiner Goebbels or Helmut Lachenmann were the ground-breaking figures and inspirators in Babel’s compositional path.

From his very first pieces already, such as music for small audiences for snare drum solo, the importance of the performer plays an important role.
“Music for small audiences was the beginning a real love affair between me and the snare drum..”

 


In one of his first pieces, ‘music for small audiences‘ Babel explores new sounds for solo snare drum and brings the role of percussion in the music business into focus.

 

Performer – Improviser – Composer

As a drummer, Babel is a touring musician wearing many hats: a fine, quiet improviser, loud, experimental drummer, for example with the band “Sudden infant” in a duo with Joke Lanz, or an interpreter of contemporary drum repertoire in various formations.   

Additionally, he composes, curates and develops projects for his own formations, such as the Berlin collective Radial, together with video artist Mio Chareteau.  

“To make music includes several processes in my opinion. First of all ‘thinking’ the music, which means composing, then transmitting the music and finally perform it for an audience: I’m fascinated by all of them.”   

All of his activities are linked by a convergence of creation and interpretation, as well as an interest in the visual, spatial and performative aspects.

“What do I want to see and what do I want to hear…. ”

For Babel, composing always begins with or even boils down to an encounter. Thus, his compositions are mostly created for specific musicians.  

He always has the performers in mind when writing and is also inspired by their movements and gestures. In the piece The way down for Duo Orion, for example, Babel took the duo’s interplay as starting point and staged it acoustically and also performatively.

 

Alexandre Babel, The way down pour violoncelle et piano, Duo Orion (Gilles Grimaître, piano, Elas Dorbath, Cello) 2020

 

“At the beginning of a project I ask myself: ‘What do I want to see and what do I want to hear’: To me, the visual side is just as important as the sound. Duo Orion, for example, has a special physicality when performing. I developed a piece for them in which the gestures are almost athletic. It almost became dance or a choreography,”.

Curating as a permanent dialogue

Babel says that his three activities – composition, interpretation and curation – have ideally come together in the artistic direction of les amplitudes Festival (La-Chaux-de-Fonds, autumn 2020). “I had the chance to combine all aspects within one object -the festival and at the same time the city of La Chaux-de-Fonds: I thought of the festival as a giant composition in separate parts – an art exhibition, live performances, drum sets and spatial compositions blending together in one new unity”.  

Since 2013, Babel has led the percussion ensemble Eklekto Geneva Percussion Center, consisting of some 20 musicians in a loose line-up. “Eklekto offers me the opportunity to develop unusual percussive situations. All projects are created in close exchange and collaboration with the composers and the musicians. “Curating is a permanent dialogue with the musicians involved”.  

 

Attentive listening

Pauline Olivero’s piece Earth ears, a so-called ‘Sonic Ritual‘ from 1989 for free instrumentation, is characteristic of Babel’s understanding of curation: “The musicians play by ear and there is no written score. One has to listen to himself as well as to the whole ensemble and react to it. The piece is about sound, space and attentive listening: to me, those are the basics of making music”.

 


Pauline Oliveros’ piece ‘Earth ears’, a ‘sonic ritual’ and openly interpretable piece from 1989, is characteristic of Babel’s approach to curation.

 

Another important project is his large percussion ensemble with 15 percussionists from the Eklekto pool. “We have clear rules: we play by heart and there is no conducting: playing without a leader creates an enormous energy and presence and at the same time opens up new ways of communication, in an almost radical way”.

 

Choeur mixte reflects the classical setting of chamber music and at the same time puts the often underestimated classical instrument ‘snare drum’ in a new spot-light. Another declaration of love to the snare drum.

 

In the piece ‘choeur mixte’ for 15 snare drums, the percussionists play their instruments standing in the shape of a wedge, on a lit, empty stage. They act strongly in relation to one another and the piece radiates power as a group and at the same time individual responsibility of the performers.

 

Music without sound

 

Among other things, Babel is currently working on a composition commissioned by the Venice Art Biennale 2022, designing the Swiss pavilion together with Swiss-based Franco-Moroccan visual artist Latifa Echakhch. Babel faces a special challenge in this case, as Echakhch wants him to create a composition without real sound. “This is an important and special task for me: through the joint creation process, we are approaching solutions on how music can sound without sound,” says Babel. At the moment, short pieces of music are being created for this purpose, which will form the basis for the final Music of Silence. Gabrielle Weber

 

Portrait Alexandre Babel ©Felix Brueggemann (2021)

 

On Friday, September 17, 2021, the Swiss Music Price ceremony will take place at Lugano Arte e Cultura (LAC) in Lugano. During that weekend, some of the prize winners will perform as part of Lugano’s Longlake Festival.  

This year’s Grand Prix musique went to Stephan Eicher.
The other prize winners are:
Alexandre Babel, Chiara Banchini, Yilian Canizares, Viviane Chassot, Tom Gabriel Fischer, Jürg Frey, Lionel Friedli, Louis Jucker, Christine Lauterburg, Roland Moser, Roli Mosimann, Conrad Steinmann, Manuel Troller and Nils Wogram.

Concerts Alexandre Babel:
Sunday, 19.9.21, 10:30h at Studio Foce, Lugano:
Alexandre Babel e Niton +ROM visuals 

23.4.-27.11.2022 Biennale Arte Venezia: Alexandre Babel & Latifa Echakhch @Swiss Pavilion Venezia Biennale

 

Joke Lanz, Joey Baron, Jeff Hirshfield, Pauline Oliveros, Biennale Arte 2022, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier, Heiner Goebbels, Helmut Lachenmann, Latifa Echakhch, Kollektiv Radial, Mio Chareteau, Elsa Dorbath

 

Sendungen SRF 2 Kultur:
in: Musikmagazin, 18./19.9.21: Alexandre Babel – Träger BAK-Musikpreis 2021 im Gespräch mit Gabrielle Weber, Redaktion Annelis Berger

Musik unserer Zeit, 16.6.21: Alexandre Babel – Perkussionist, Komponist, Kurator, Redaktion Gabrielle Weber

neoblog, 14.10.2020: La ville – une composition géante, Text Anya Leveillé

 

Neo-Profiles:
Alexandre Babel, Les amplitudes, Eklekto Geneva Percussion Center, Duo Orion, Gilles Grimaître