Quasi (ébauche) performed by the Arditti String Quartet at the Norhwestern University New Music Conference, NUNC 4.
In Quasi (ébauche) the original formative ideas are constantly recalled in a series of reconstructions of the past in constantly present contexts, having at times more fidelity—and at times growing less similar—to the original experience. These reconstructions, by means of pitch gene recombinations, leave only memory vestiges of the original by constantly shifting, diffusing, distorting, transforming, omitting or adding events according to a model of retention/corruption.
It is, in other words, like drawing “on the elements and gist of the past, and extract, recombine and reassemble them into imaginary events that never occurred in that exact form,…not to preserve the past but to adapt it so as to enrich and manipulate the present.’’ It is all about what is remembered and how it is remembered…
Northwestern University New Music Conference | April 24, 2021 |
Happy to be a part of NUNC!4: Northwestern University New Music Conference this year at Northwestern.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the festival – originally scheduled to take place last year – will take place online. The recording of my work Quasi (ébauche) for string quartet, performed by the fabulous Arditti String Quartet, can be found at: https://sites.northwestern.edu/…/scores-for-arditti…/ along with works by Yu-Chun Chien, Onur Dülger, Yuko Ohara, Ruud Roelofsen, and Max Vinetz.
Many thanks to Hans Thomalla and his team for their tireless efforts. Many thanks, of course, to Irvine Arditti, Ralf Ehlers, Lucas Fels, Ashot Sarkissjan.
Program Notes
In Quasi (ébauche) the original formative ideas are constantly recalled in a series of reconstructions of the past in constantly present contexts, having at times more fidelity—and at times growing less similar—to the original experience. These reconstructions, by means of pitch gene recombinations, leave only memory vestiges of the original by constantly shifting, diffusing, distorting, transforming, omitting or adding events according to a model of retention/corruption.
It is, in other words, like drawing “on the elements and gist of the past, and extract, recombine and reassemble them into imaginary events that never occurred in that exact form,…not to preserve the past but to adapt it so as to enrich and manipulate the present.’’ It is all about what is remembered and how it is remembered…
One of the leading conferences for new music in the world, the Northwestern University New Music Conference (NUNC!) brings together composers, performing musicians, scholars, and other new music advocates for a day of workshops, panel discussions, and concerts.
This year’s virtual conference guests include the Arditti Quartet; composers Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Jennifer Walshe, and Katherine Young; and musicologists Kerry O’Brien and Ted Gordon. Presentations will be given by Sergio Cote Barco, Elaine Fitz Gibbon, Daniel Tacke, and Ben Zucker. The conference culminates in a performance by the Bienen School’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, with guest vocalist and violinist Alyssa Pyper.
All events are free and open to the public. More information, and registration for the virtual presentations, is available at https://sites.northwestern.edu/nunc/
Recording session with the Arditti String Quartet for the New Music Conference NUNC! 4 at the Institute for New Music at Northwestern University, U.S.A.| Zoom session | March 5th, 2021
I am deeply indebted to Irvine, Ashot, Ralf, and Lucas of the Arditti String Quartet and, of course, Hans Thomalla, artistic director of NUNC!, and his team for having made this happen. With the Arditti String Quartet as the main guest ensemble, NUNC! 4 was originally planned in April last year and had to be postponed when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
Among a total of nine works the quartet was supposed to workshop and perform is also my string quartet Quasi (ébauche)available by Babel Scores.
Due to the continuing problems caused by the pandemic, NUNC! 4 was decided to take place online on April 24th and the recordings made on March 4th, 5th, and 6th will be hosted on NUNC! website.
There is an interesting background story about how this recording took place that I quote from Hans Thomalla’s wall:
“Since the quartet is based in London and Germany, and travel to the US is restricted, we had hoped to arrange for a recording session in Germany, so those nine works would still have a platform at the conference. With the new English virus mutation causing a lockdown for travel from London that option closed down last month. The country of Luxembourg, in the heart of Europe, still permits travel from England, though, and the quartet had a concert scheduled there, which in spite of all the restrictions in the world right now actually happened. The Luxembourg conservatory of Music, their President and their chair in composition Claude Lenners – in a gesture of incredible support for New Music and for our conference – offered a concert hall and the infrastructure for the event and the workshops are now happening there.”
Many thanks to all of you: the Arditti String quartet, Hans Thomalla, Claude Lenners, the Luxenmbourg Conservatory, and Jerry sets from concerts at Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.
My interview-participation in Die Wolke art group project for Buffer Fringe festival. Using the spoken word material to create sound worlds…. looking forward for this result!
Languages of the Unheard by Danae Theodoridou & Dimitri Papageorgiou. A live experiment of conversing in the language of protest, participatory performance, 2020.
Freiraum Festival 2020 Online Artistic Interventions | Saturday, October 31st, 2020 | 16:45-17:00 Greek Time (15:45-16:00 CET or 10:45 EDT) | watch live at http://www.freiraumfestival.eu
“WHAT WE MUST SEE is that a riot is the language of the unheard.” Martin Luther King
Following a performance score, i.e. a list of instructions similar to those of a board game, Languages of the Unheard construct an online visual and auditory manifesto based on the language of signs and slogans coming from important protests in different European countries from the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) or ‘Common Market’ in 1957 to 2020. Playing with the performativity of zoom’s feature to ‘rename’ ourselves, we will change constantly our names using the language of those signs, producing a written dialogue in the language of protest. During this dialogue, parts of our words will be audio processed and fed back into the dialogue in different ways, creating a soundscape of languages of the unheard. This ‘silent’ conversation aims to reveal the materiality of the language of protest in order to create an embodied experience of its social force. What stays from our common fights in public space when we don’t have the proximity of our bodies? How can we turn immaterial language into a material ‘action’ in the way Arendt defined the term as the human ability to initiate something in public space that addresses the many without being able to control its outcome in advance?
Concept, creation: Danae Theodoridou Composition: Dimitri Papageorgiou Participants: Kate Adams (UK), Maria Apostolakea (France), Marijana Cvetkovic (Serbia), Ivana Filip (Croatia), Elena Koukoli (Greece), Janeda Milio (Albania), Eleni Mylona (Switzerland), Stefanie Schweiger (Austria), Elena Stamatopoulou (Greece), Tina Yotopoulou (Greece)
Languages of the Unheard is commissioned by Common Lab – Goethe-Institut Excellency Initiative by Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki & ArtBOX in collaboration with TIF-HELEXPO, Freiraum and Institute Hypewerk for Postindustrial Design, in the context of the State of the Arts.
A collaborative, decentralised, democratised festival taking place simultaneously in the physical and the digital worlds.Developed jointly by more than 40 organisations spread around Europe, the Freiraum Festival includes an Online Summit and more than 20 Local Events, dealing with two issues that have been accelerated by the recent pandemic crisis: the “State of Freedom in Europe today: the ongoing biopolitical crisis and emerging social movements”, and the “State of the Arts: new formats and audiences”.During three days at the end of October (30/10-1/11), established thinkers and audiences around Europe gather to discuss these issues, online and offline, in specially conceived events which transform the local into a subjective centre.The online Summit combines a studio and teleconferencing platform (Zoom). It includes talks, discussions, artistic interventions especially made for the online format, and live connection with the local events held by the Freiraum partners.More information & programme: www.freiraumfestival.eu
Great News from Chicago: the amazing Arditti Quartet will perform my string quartet Quasi (ébauch) at Nunc! 4 New Music Conference and Festival at Northwestern University, USA on 25th of April 2020.
One of the leading conferences for new music in the world, NUNC! brings together composers, performing musicians, scholars and other new music advocates for a weekend of workshops, panel discussions and concerts.
Each biennial event features a program of new works from invited guest composers as well as from a peer reviewed call for scores. Calls for performers, electronic music and presentations will for the first time be supplemented by a call for improvisers, connecting to Chicago’s rich history of improvised music.
The Arditti Quartett program will have great pieces:
Yu-Chun Chien – Trio
Onur Dülger – Barzakh
Yuko Ohara – Birefringence II for string quartet
Dimitri Papageorgiou – Quasi (ébauch)
Ruud Roelofsen– on intimacy III
Max Vinetz – maintaining
28th INTERNATIONAL REVIEW of COMPOSERS | Students’ Cultural Center, Great Hall | Belgrade, Serbia | Sunday, 6 October 2019 | 18:00
Even the sky screams sometimes too II for accordion, commissioned by the Delian Academy with the kind support of Ernst von Siemens Foundation. Panagiotis Andreoglou – accordion.
The program entails also works by Luka Cubrillo, Milan Aleksic, Ivana Ogjanovic, Svetlana Savic, and Tatjana Milosevic.
Ensemble Klangforum: Mikael Rudolfsson – trombone, Björn Wilker – Percussion, Joonas Ahonen – piano, Dimitrios Polisoidis – viola
PPCM members (Performance Practice in Contemporary Music): Severin Dornier – Saxophone, Teresa Doblinger – Clarinet, David Schmidt – Trumpet, Leo Morello – Cello
Dimitri Papageorgiou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Orestis Toufektsis, University of Music and Dram Graz
The OUT HEAR New Music Week 2019 is happy to announce a Call for scores to participate in a Symposium and Master Class in Composition on December 6th to 14th, 2019, lead by our ensemble-in-residence, Ensemble Klangforum in collaboration with four members of the PPCM and our faculty Klaus Lang, Dimitri Papageorgiou, and Orestis Toufektsis.
I was glad to be among the special guests of Diffrazioni – Florence Multimedia Festival (http://www.diffrazionifestival.com/nuova-pagina), “a project dedicated to contemporary art exploring the boundaries between technology and poetic expression, where new tools, new scenarios and deep inner emotions meet and combine.”
The European premiere of my work “Am I hearing voices within the voice?” took place on Thursday, March 28th, 2019 at the magnificent Le Murate Progeti Arte Contemporanea.
This festival is an opportunity for connection, celebration, knowledge, development. It is a physical space and a short moment in time where multiple experiences converge, each one originating from different research fields in science, technology, art, expression, communication. Diffrazioni bases its strength on a system of synergies between institutions of higher artistic education, public administrations, young artists, cultural associations and non-profit organizations.
After its world premiere at the Tehran International Electronic Music Festival, “…am I hearing voices?” receives a US premiere November 27, 2018 at the Grains of Sound #1 in San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Osher Salon.
Great News from Chicago: the amazing Arditti Quartet will perform my string quartet Quasi (ébauch) at Nunc! 4 New Music Conference and Festival at Northwestern University, USA on 25th of April 2020.
