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Eivind Buene: Mixed Metaphors

When Hannah and Uli asked me to write a piece for violin and Minimoog, my first reaction was yes, of course I’ll write for you. My next thought was wait, it’s impossible to reconcile these two old wooden boxes, one with fingerboard and strings attached, the other one filled with vintage circuits and oscillators. How can these two instruments, made for very different musics and with very different sound producing mechanisms, engage in meaningful dialogue?

 

It wasn’t until the first workshop, when I heard Uli and Hannah play together, that I realized how closely related these instruments are in terms of acoustic qualities. The conceptual distance between the instruments were all but cancelled out in the act of playing them. So there was a possibility to work with this difference in closeness and distance, and make a piece where the instruments strive to close the gap between them. The sensitivity of the musicians, their ability to listen to each other and transfer timbral qualities between them of course play an important role in this game; there were also compositional decisions that would facilitate the exchange between the instruments. I decided to treat the oscillators in the Minimoog and the violin strings in the same manner, a framework that dictated the rules of engagement and the musical ideas in the piece: microtonal fluctuations, glissandi, fixed parallel-movements, imitations of melodic contours etc. The pressure of the bow is also similar to the ‚pressure‘ of the noise generators in the Minimoog, and the filters of the synthesizer relate to the timbral transformations of different bowing actions on the violin. The music always gravitates towards these points of contact.

 

Into this mix I added fragments of modality, to work with another set of differences: Between the microtonal continuum and fixed diatonic intervals. However, this distance is always measured by the interplay between the two instruments. When I started writing this piece, I thought of the oscillator as a metaphor for the violin string. But I see that it might as well be the other way around. And at this point, when the piece is finished, I realize an opposite approach could also have been true: The instruments could have strived to maximize their individuality, to enhance the distance between them. But this music is about bringing together, not tearing apart.
Eivind Buene

Biography

Eivind Buene

Eivind Buene (*1973 in Oslo) is living and working in Oslo, writing for a wide array of European ensembles and orchestras. He also frequently engages in collaborations with improvising musicians, developing music in the cross-section between classical notation and improvisation. Buene has a keen interest in text, and has published several novels and essays beside the musical work. He currently teaches composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music.

Eivind Buene
© Lars Skaaning
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Oxana Omelchuk: Die Zähmung der Stille

The study deals exclusively with the technique of ring modulation, which multiplies 2 incoming voltages together and forms the difference and summation tones from them at the output.

Electric violin and electric piano are each ring modulated with the same oscillator of the Behringer 2600.

In a sense, the piece is an allusion to the Trio 1977 by Johannes Fritsch, which features trombone, viola and synthesizer.
Oxana Omelchuk

Biography

Oxana Omelchuk

Oxana Omelchuk (*1975 in Belarus) studied with Johannes Fritsch and Michael Beil at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. In addition to her compositional activities, she performs as a musician in various formations, and her range as a performing musician is reflected in her works. In her approach to existing material, the composer does not distinguish between U and E or High and Low. In her compositions she does not primarily want to create something new, but rather to transform existing, rediscovered material into the present.

 

For several years, she has also been intensively involved in her compositional work with modular synthesizers, which for her means developing works out of experimental trial arrangements and improvisational processes.

 

Since 2020 Oxana Omelchuk is part of the collective Polar Publik, a community of artists from the genres of dance, theater, new music and visual arts, who in their transdisciplinary projects at the interface of art and science address current situations in which the phenomena of power and powerlessness become explicit.

Foto: privat
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Milica Djordjević: Fail again

12 years ago, I spent countless nights in a studio at IRCAM working on a piece for cello and live electronics. That’s how Fail was born, a piece that reflected my life in Paris and was inspired by Beckett’s quote, „Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.“ Composing it was an adventure, indeed a challenge, even the premiere was an adventure. And so was its (hopefully for now!) last performance: here at the ECLAT Festival in 2019. But that’s another story. Now, more than a decade later, the duo Weirich – Löffler, dear friends and inspiring musicians, invited me to write a piece for them, for their exciting series Back to the Future. This was a good moment to start a long awaited inner dialogue with Fail. Again, following the „crash and reboot system“, new episodes keep building up, usually into just one or two small motifs, from which true cosms emerge.
Milica Djordević

Biography

Milica Djordjević

Milica Djordjević (*1984 in Belgrade) has an exuberant sound imagination and, thanks to her access to the entire arsenal of contemporary sound and playing techniques, “is able to transform the sounds produced by a lone cello into an acoustic thunderstorm of sheer existential dimensions by means of live electronics, conversely, to let twelve percussionists sink into the transitional field from the inaudible to the shadowy, or in ensemble and orchestral compositions to gently liquefy static sound surfaces and transform them into sluggish and viscous currents. In her music, the listener can never be sure of surprises.”

Her music is strange and familiar at the same time – strange because it unleashes darkness, fear, hidden and suppressed things; familiar because it makes these things explode and their splinters glitter. As brittle and abstract as the surface of her pieces may initially appear, the elaborate textures and dramatic tensions are sensually captivating.

She began her composition studies in Belgrade, where she was already involved in electronic music, then went to Strasbourg and the Paris IRCAM, and completed her studies in Berlin at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music from 2011 to 2013. Her already extensive output, performed by leading soloists and contemporary music ensembles, includes works for solo instruments, chamber music ranging from instrumental duos to double quartets, vocal works and large-scale orchestral compositions. Milica Djordjević has received numerous prizes and awards for her works, including the Belmont Prize in 2015, the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Composer Prize in 2016, and the Claudio Abbado Composition Prize in 2020.

Milica Djordjevic
© Astrid Ackermann
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Dariya Maminova: Microstories about tenderness

“Microstories about tenderness“ are 9 miniatures for electric violin and synthesizer Minimoog. While searching for synthesizer sounds, I noticed that most of the sounds are very gentle. So I decided to call these micro stories soft or delicate. They have titles that reflect my personal associations: 1) Gentle Gray; 2) Gentle Rain; 3) Gentle Kiss of the Wind; 4) Light Whirlwind; 5) Tender Touch; 6) Gentle Pop Song; 7) Gentle Flights; 8) Gentle Disco; 9) Gentle Passacaglia. Between the miniatures there will be small intermezzi: I will draw and the audience will hear texts by writer Alexander Estis on the theme of tenderness.
Dariya Maminova

Biography

Dariya Maminova

Dariya Maminova (*1988 in Sankt Petersburg) arbeitet als Komponistin, Pianistin und Sängerin in den Bereichen zeitgenössische instrumentale und elektronische Komposition, Improvisation und Musiktheater. Ihr großes Interesse gilt der Synthese der experimentellen zeitgenössischen Musik sowohl mit Gattungen der populären Musik als auch mit Musik anderer Kulturen. Dies schlägt sich auch in Ihrem Projekt Dariya’s Songs nieder, in dem sie ihre eigenen Lieder interpretiert.

 

Dariya Maminova
© Jaroslav Kotov
Work Information

Gordon Kampe: tanzen!

In the wonderful Wim Wenders film about Pina Bausch it says „Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost!“ – I agree, especially in these dark times, wholeheartedly! We must dance! I am, unfortunately, a miserable dancer. But I do it anyway, secretly. With the daughter, when the Sunday Tatort jingle sounds, alone in the study, when the Rosenkavaliersuite drives me crazy. Sitting in the car, I am all alone the four little swans. I also admire dancers! How an incredible expression can be achieved with mere muscle tension or a look, great! That’s why the piece is a dance theater in a small space! Always similar figures jump back and forth, sometimes elegant, sometimes riotous. What was appealing to me about these crazy instruments, which I fell in love with in shock, was not only their sound. Also to consider that sometimes one hand will play on this instrument while the foot is doing something and the other hand is already on its way somewhere else… I always saw that in front of me and thought: actually everything is dance! The piece is dedicated to the two dancers Hannah Weirich and Ulrich Löffler!
Gordon Kampe

Biography

Gordon Kampe

Gordon Kampe (*1976 in Herne) studied composition with Hans-Joachim Hespos, Adriana Hölszky and Nicolaus A. Huber as well as music and history in Bochum after training as an electrician. He has received several awards, including the Composition Prize of the City of Stuttgarter (2007 and 2011), the Composer Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung and the Rome Prize. Since 2017 he is professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. One focus of his work is in the field of vocal music and music theater. The genres here range from experimental forms and piece developments, live radio plays, and music theater for children to opera. Grdon Kampe likes sounds, dance and songs.

Biography

Duo Weirich Löffler

Hannah Weirich was a young student with Prof. Federico Agostini, studied with Prof. Ingolf Turban at the HfM Stuttgart from 1999 – 2004 and attended master classes with Franco Gulli, Yfrah Neaman, Igor Ozim and Dénes Zsigmondy, among others. Since 1992 she has performed worldwide with her piano trio Trio Fridegk, with which she has won several national and international prizes. In 2005 she became a permanent member of the Ensemble Musikfabrik. She has performed as a soloist with, among others, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra and the Krakow State Philharmonic Orchestra, worked with Ensemble Resonanz, ascolta, the Neue Vocalsolisten, or the jazz formation Shreefpunk, and was a lecturer with, among others, the German Federal Youth Orchestra, Studio Musikfabrik, and from 2014 to 2017 as part of the master’s program in New Music at Folkwang University of the Arts Essen. In 2004 she received a scholarship from the Rudolf Eberle Foundation with a one-year residency at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, and in 2011 she was awarded the Förderpreis des Landes NRW.

 

Ulrich Löffler completed his piano studies at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen. As a soloist, he has performed with the Bavarian Radio and SWR Symphony Orchestras, among others, and has been a guest at international festivals such as the Salzburg Festival, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Ars Musica Brussels. Löffler is a prizewinner of the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. As a founding member, he has performed with Ensemble Musikfabrik at all international festivals since 1990. As a lecturer, Ulrich Löffler taught at the Folkwang University of the Arts Essen from 1998 to 2003 as part of the master’s degree program in New Music. In addition to his commitment to composed contemporary music, he also performs in improvisation projects and gives concerts with rock and jazz bands.

Foto: Janet Sinica
Biography

Hannah Weirich

Biography

Ulrich Löffler

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