Ensemble KNM Berlin / Neo Hülcker & Antonia Baehr / Marta Zapparoli

Ensemble KNM Berlin: Concert with compositions by Juliana Hodkinson, Jessie Marino, Ana Maria Rodriguez, Katharina Rosenberger / Neo Hülcker & Antonia Baehr: “MFTT #3a” (Performance) / Premiere / Marta Zapparoli: “Sonata Per Eterna” (Concert)

In the concert by Ensemble KNM Berlin, compositions by Katharina Rosenberger and the young US-American composer Jessie Marino will receive their German premiere. Just like Rosenberger’s and Marinos’s pieces, the compositions by Juliana Hodkinson and Ana Maria Rodriguez also expand the classical set-up of the concert by video, light and performance elements into the theatrical and cinematic. Next is the premiere of Wilde & Hülcker’s MftT #3A for voice, movement and video input. Commissioned by Heroines of Sound, this work is dedicated to the dog Archi. The evening concludes with Marta Zapparoli’s solo performance Sonata Per Eterna, which, in addition to electronics, uses mainly tape recorders and tape machines.

Jessie Marino

The Whale is a Capital Fish (2016) – German premiere

For performer, electronics and video

What I am trying to tell you,

Cannot be truly heard.

A mouth that has no breath.

Like the shark and the whale who cannot rest,

So they swim through air.

                Jessie Marino


Juliana Hodkinson

Prompt, immediate, now / very restrained and cautious (2013)

For clarinet, percussion, viola, violoncello and electronics

Prompt, immediate, now / very restrained and cautious for electro-acoustic quartet was premiered in the Danish Embassy of Berlin on 27 January 2013 as part of the Transmediale Festival 2013, as a musical contribution to the opening of the group exhibition curated by Åsa Stjerna to celebrate the reopening of the Scandinavian embassies in Berlin. According to the circumstances of each concert hall, the quartet can be performed amplified or non-amplified. The samples used in the composition are played via a quadrophonic set-up controlled by a foot pedal.

In 2011, the USA put pressure on the Egyptian government to legalize the Muslim Brotherhood and offer it a role in a new government. Egypt would have had to ignore or give up its traditional ban on parties oriented to a particular religion. After Mubarak’s resignation and the military takeover, the West declared that the army must immediately hand over power to a civilian government. US Vice President Biden demanded that the state of emergency be lifted at once. The then Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit replied that it was not “helpful” to speak “about prompt, immediate, now – as if you are imposing on a great country like Egypt, a great friend that has always maintained the best of relationships with the United States – you are imposing your will.” (Reuters, 9 February 2011)


Ana Maria Rodriguez

Das Stereoskop der Einzelgänger (2015) – Premiere of the concerto version

Excerpts:

In der Dunkelheit

For violin/bandurria, viola, violoncello with distortion and live electronics

Im Weltraum

For trumpet, violoncello and electronics

Die Spiegel

For violin, viola, violoncello, kemençe and live electronics

Das Atom

For trumpet, violin, viola, violoncello, voice

In his anthology “Das Stereoskop der Einzelgänger”, the Argentine author Juan Rodolfo Wilcock portrays seventy loners: cannibalistic couples, gods afflicted by the everyday, nerds not able to stand the sunshine, unemployed angels, endlessly talking solo entertainers or the sick whose gaze at the mirror becomes their only social contact. Despite their threatening alienation from the world, they all obsessively, bravely, crazily and sensitively defend their life plans. Wilcock’s language, riddled with everyday cruelties, is sharply constructed and humorously pointed, fantastically bizarre and eccentrically stubborn. A virtuoso phantasy blurs the boundaries between humane and feral, between people and monsters. Das Stereoskop der Einzelgänger is the first joint work of composer Ana Maria Rodriguez, director Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski and the KNM Berlin, which was created for the Winter Circus of Reims in 2014. In 2015, the music theatre installation was adapted for the stage and premiered at the Théâtre National de Marseille. In today’s premiere of the concerto version, the focus is on Ana Maria Rodriguez’s interpretation of this unusual universe as a musical steeplechase.


Katharina Rosenberger

modules (2015) – German premiere

For amplified tenor saxophone, e-guitar, drums and piano with effect pedals

As the title suggest, the composition has modular properties. The piece can be played all the way through, as a sort of one-movement piece, or alternatively broken down into five sequences. The individual voices also take on a kinetic attitude. modules is designed as a concert installation: in the room, all musicians are placed as far apart from each other as possible performance islands in a quadrophonic position. The place of the audience, however, is in the middle of the room. Equipped with amplifiers and effect pedals, the Ensemble communicates across distances and unites the spatialized sounds, echoes and musical impulses into a spatial sound geometry.


Wilde & Hülcker, aka Antonia Baehr & Neo Hülcker

MftT #3a (UA) – Commissioned by Heroines of Sound

Composition for voice, movements and video input

Carola Caggiano, sound-light design. MftT#3a is dedicated to the dog Archi.

Since 2016, the* composers* and performers* Neo Hülcker and Henry Wilde (also know as the choreographer Antonia Baehr) have been working together closely. Their pieces appear in various visual and acoustic formats such as composition, video work, performance or installation. MftT #3a is a composition for voice, movements and video input, performed by the composers* themselves. It is dedicated to the dog Archi.


Marta Zapparoli

Sonata Per Eterna (2018)

Solo performance: electronics, tape recorders, tape machines

This text composition combines the meaning of some combinations of words with selected radio waves and signals of natural radio phenomena that I have recorded in recent years in different countries. The piece is inspired by my personal, very romantic idea and by scientific research into the soul's journey after death in a universe that is in perpetual motion. The signals sent by the soul leave the body in the form of pure energy and enter space, passing through some stellar storms, planets, pulsars, black holes and intergalactic dust until they reach the Krasnikov tube: a distortion of space-time, which, if you move almost at the speed of light, can be consciously generated. Thus, the soul reaches its destination and discovers the “eternal” in another universe. The fragment of a meteor returns to earth with a symbolic message that carries with it the mystery of new life. – Sonata Per Eterna is dedicated to my father and his spirit.
 

The piece will be played in real time during the performance using tape machines.