ZEITSTRÖME FESTIVAL – Tage für aktuelle Musik | SONAR QUARTETT / SOFIA LABROPOULOU – works for Kanun and string quartet | Akademie für Tonkunst, Darmstadt, Germany | Feb 11, 2023 | 19:00
The highly virtuosic Sonar Quartet and the Kanun player Sofia Labropoulou present works by Dimitri Papageorgiou and Stefan Pohlit, which were developed especially for these musicians. The Turkish zither meets the traditional string quartet and together they promise extraordinary and exciting sound experiences.
The Sonar Quartet’s composition commissions are funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. The concert is sponsored by the German Music Council as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR program with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Program
Dimitri Papageorgiou (*1965) Oumuamua for Kanun and string quartet
Stefan Pohlit (*1976) eyéo (Streichquartett #5) for Kanun and string quartet
In collaboration with the Greek kanunist Sofia Labropoulou, the Sonar Quartet is developing new commissioned works by Dimitri Papageorgiou and Stefan Pohlit, as well as its own framework program that continues to spin the aesthetic directions of the compositions on the borders of improvisation. Against the background of the arithmetic tradition of the Aegean region, the focus is now on the development of a microtonal playing practice, on which the modern kanun (descendant of the Pythagorean monochord) is based.
With Sofia Labropoulou, the ensemble focuses on a personality who has translated the musical heritage of the European and Aegean musical traditions into a living practice. Papageorgiou’s and Pohlit’s completely different perspectives are flanked within the program by a separate improvisation laboratory, which transforms the purely subjective perspectives of the compositional styles in the mirror of the equally subjective “interaction culture” of the ensemble. The framework program is also based in parts on composed works of the Turkish makam tradition, which the ensemble arranges and alienates independently before becoming independent with the theoretical foundations of the arithmetic tradition.
With
Sonar Quartet: Susanne Zapf (violin), Wojciech Garbowski (violin), Ian Anderson (viola), Konstantin Manaev (cello); Sofia Labropoulou (kanun)
Program
Works by Stefan Pohlit and Dimitri Papageorgiou
Info
The concert will be recorded by SRF2 and broadcast on 15.2.
On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Iannis Xenakis, the Bremen Percussion Ensemble commissions 3 generations of Greek composers in its homage. Grouped around the work Okho by Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) are 4 world premieres by Georgia Koumará (1991), Petros Leivadas (1990), Irini Amargianaki (1980) and Dimitri Papageorgiou (1965).
The works were written as part of the Schlag>|<Art project of the Bremen Percussion Ensemble.
Performances in Germany
December 1st, Kulturkirche St. Stephani Bremen
December 3rd, Tonalisaal, Hamburg
December 6th, Unerhörte Musik, BKA Theater, Berlin
Program
Iannis Xenakis 1922-2001 “Okho” (1989) for 3 percussionists
Irini Amargianaki *1980 “a lullaby for Xenakis” (2022) premiere for 4 percussionists
Georgia Koumará *1991 ” Perceptives on radical attention” (2022) premiere for 4 percussionists
Petros Leivadas *1990 “Night watches” (2022) UA for 4 percussionists
Dimitri Papageorgiou *1965 “Divagations” (2022) UA for 4 percussionists
33rd Daegu International Contemporary Music Festival | Ensemble iiiiiiiii | 대구콘서트하우스 챔버홀 Chamber Hall | Thursday 25/08/22, 19:30 |
au moins … (Fr. for “at the very least”) occurs in shifting times. What happened and what happens at every single moment punctuate each other… In reconstructions… Glimpses of the past are brought back to the flux of the present… Fragile interpolations enforce some semblance of unity… Until something, almost spontaneous, changes the way we orient to sound… On time… and beyond…
The work was commissioned by ensemble iiiiiiiii, Seongmin Ji – artistic director.
33rd Daegu International Contemporary Music Festival | Ensemble iiiiiiiii | 대구콘서트하우스 챔버홀 Chamber Hall | Thursday 25/08/22, 19:30 |
The world premiere of au moins… (2022) for flute, bass clarinet, violin, and piano is taking place at the Daegu International Contemporary Music Festival (Cheol Ha Park, Artistic Director), in a concert that also entails works by Siho Kim, Simon Steen-Andersen, Caspar Johannes Walter, Alex Mincek, Yukiko Watanabe, Enno Poppe, and Eunsil Kwon.
au moins … (Fr. for “at the very least”) occurs in shifting times. What happened and what happens at every single moment punctuate each other… In reconstructions… Glimpses of the past are brought back to the flux of the present… Fragile interpolations enforce some semblance of unity… Until something, almost spontaneous, changes the way we orient to sound… On time… and beyond…
The work was commissioned by the Ensemble iiiiiiiii.
ensembleiiiiiiiii is an ensemble founded in 2014 to devote itself to contemporary music. ensemble iiiiiiiii led ‘iN International contemporary music festival’ in which composers, musicians and visual artist from six countries including UK, Italy, Sweden, Russia, and Austria participated and sponsored by AVL CF, Austria’s leading art sponsorship foundation, and the Austrian Embassy in Korea. ensemble iiiiiiiii pursues concerts and programs internationally, such as performances being broadcast on ORF Ö1, Austria’s largest national broadcaster. recently, we have commissioned a recording session by chinese composer, Z.Huang from solo to ensemble pieces and invited by various organization and composer’s group.
ICMC 2022 (International Computer Music Conference) is hosted by the University of Limerick in Limerick, Ireland between Jul 3 and 9 in-person and online.
Among dozens of very interesting pieces, my work “…am I hearing voices within the voice?” for fixed media is presented as a part of the concert program on Jul 7.
Ensemble of the Performance Practice of Contempoary Music (PPCM): Gregory Chalier – flute/piccolo flute, Elena Arbonies Jauregui – clarinet/bass clarinet, Lea Moullet – violin, Leo Morello – cello
The outHEAR New Music Week, is an international symposium and master class for composition, featuring Ensemble Klangforum Wien in collaboration with four members of Performance Practice in Contemporary Music (PPCM) ensemble. Is organized by the Mayoralty of Culture and Sciences of the City of Larissa (Panos Sapkas, deputy mayor) and it is taking place from April 1st – April 10th, 2022 at the Municipal Conservatory of Larissa.
The outHear New Music Week was initiated by Christos Lenoutsos, pianist, and is co-organized by the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, the Department of Music Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. It is under the auspices of the Austrian Embassy in Athens, Greece.
The outHEAR Symposium and Master Class in composition is an intensive curriculum in composition. Our Composer Fellows work closely with the world-class performers of the Ensemble Klangforum Wien and distinguished faculty, Franck Bedrossian, Dimitri Papageorgiou, and Orestis Toufektsis, in one-on-one lessons and mentoring, masterclasses, coaching, rehearsals, discussions, and performances.
tiemf.com | 19 Feb 2022 | 21:30 Central European Time |
“Languages of the Unheard: at the opening concert of the Tehran International Electronic Music Festival, on February 19, 2022. The work will stay online until March 5th on the festival’s webpage (tiemf.com) Languages of the Unheard, is an experiment of conversing in the language of protest, we created together with Danae Theodoridou for Freiraum Festival 2020. Languages of the Unheard was commissioned by the project “Common Lab”, a Goethe-Institut Excellency Initiative by Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki & ArtBOX, in collaboration with TIF- HELEXPO and Freiraum Festival 2020. Curated by Christos Savvidis. Forever grateful to the lovely women, Maria Apostolakea, Marijana Cvetkovic, Ivana Filip, Elena Koukoli, Janeda Milo, Eleni Mylona, Stefanie Schweiger, Έλενα Σίγμα & Tina Yotopoulou, who inhabited our idea with such generosity and devotion!
Program notes
‘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?
…am I hearing voices within the voice? for fixed media is presented at the 5th Annual Research on Contemporary Composition Conference, at the University of North Georgia, Dahlonega Campus, Georgia, U.S.A.
October 30, 2021, Breakout Session 3 – 2:00pm – 5:00pm Georgia GA, USA Time ( 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM GMT)October 31, 2021 (Gainesville Campus):Acousmatic Installation (Mobile) – 2:00pm – 5:00pm Georgia GA, USA Time ( 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM GMT)
Program Note “. . . am I hearing voices within the voice?” was composed in more voices and vocal manifestations from samples of principally non-verbal vocalizations, reconstructed by fragmenting, overlaying and filtering the vocal timbres, to accommodate my own requirements During the composition process, I was more interested into the subleties of spoken sound when speech is deprived of meaning, the subtle pauses, speech cadences, evolving dynamics, the stumbles, the stammers, the um’s, and ah’s, the speeding up and slowing down.
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.
dimitri papageorgiou 