Hawk

07.05./ 23.59h/ Hawk @ French Pavilion (30′)

Sword. Kitchen knife. 2 guitars.Bunch of amplifiers. Drugs. Ritual. Action.

Inconsolable Ghost

07.05./23h / Inconsolable Ghost @ &TD big hall(50′)

Zsolt Sőrés Ahad – viola, objects, electronics

Anthea Caddy – cello

Hilary Jeffery – trombone, electronics

Gideon Kiers – computer, electronics

Inconsolable Ghost is a new audiovisual ensemble initiated by Hilary Jeffery and Gideon Kiers, two ex-members of The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation. Conjuring up a twenty-first century vision of spiritism and occupying a similarly spooky territory as Kilimanjaro / Fuji, this new project works with several well known artists who are conceived as channelers of a restless spirit known as the “Inconsolable Ghost”...

secret messages transmitted from another dimension are discovered via distorted telephone signals, fuzzy images on old analogue TV screens, cryptic scripts appearing in archaic computers, self-deleting hieroglyphic emails, rapidly shifting images on long forgotten websites…

The debut of Inconsolable Ghost was organised by Alchemistic Undercurrent (“auxxx”) in Amsterdam on 30 January 2014 at OT301 – the old film academy – recordings of this first séance have been circulating on the internet ever since… There followed a Central European tour in May 2014 which brought the group to Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest. This tour featured collaborations with the Japanese filmmaker Makino Takashi and the Hungarian viola player Zsolt Sőrés Ahad.

soundcloud.com/inconsolableghost

vimeo.com/84821535

inconsolableghost.com

ImprovE2: Svetlana Maras, Alen Sinkauz, Milana Zaric, WoO

09.05 /23h / ImprovE2: Svetlana Maraš, Alen Sinkauz, Milana Zarić, WoO @ &TD  semicircular hall (45′)

ImprovE2 is a collective and monthly platform for improvisers, creative performers, experimentators, electroacoustic and audiovisual projects. The collective was formed at the end of the year 2012 and until now they have organized around 30 concerts on various venues in Belgrade: galleries, cultural centres, concert venues and night clubs. The ImprovE2 concerts hosted more than 40 national musicians, composers, sound artist and visual artists, but also some of the leading musicians from the international improvised music scene, such as: Chris Cutler, Richard Barrett, Isabelle Duthoit, Franz Hautzinger, Annie Gosfield, Yedo Gibson, Irena Tomažin, Sten Sandell and others. Every event in the series of concerts connects creative performers from different fields of music production. ImprovE2 has thus become a regular monthly platform for a democratic new and improvised music set outside of the institutional borders. Showroom of Contemporary Sound will feature three musicians from the ImprovE2 collective: Svetlana Maraš on electronics, Milana Zarić on electric harp and WoO on electric guitar and they are joined by the very active musician from the Croatian improvised music scene, bass player Alen Sinkauz.

www.i2.rs

Gerriet K. Sharma

06.,09.05 / 19.30h/ Gerriet K. Sharma @French Pavilion, SC Gallery (45′)

grrawe | grafik unten | >mirage< 1 (2009 -2015)

Ambisonic spatial-sound compositions for the IEM-icosahedral loudspeaker

Gerriet K. Sharma (Bonn, 1974) is a German composer and sound artist. After studying at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, he studied composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz (KUG), where he is currently pursuing doctoral studies, with a thesis titled “Composing with Plastic Sound Phenomena in Computer Music”. He lives in Cologne and Graz. Within the last ten years he was deeply involved in spatialization of electroacoustic compositions in Ambisonics and Wave-Field Synthesis and transformation into 3D-sound plastics. From 2010 to 2014 he was curator of Signale Graz, a concert series for electroacoustic music, algorithmic composition, radio art and performance. In 2011 he founded the ensemble Chambers for Space Inquiries in Cologne and Graz for the performance of the series of building sound compositions “Oblivious to Gravity”. His works were presented at a number of international festivals and conferences: SPARK Festival of Electronic Music and Art (Minneapolis/USA), New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, DAFx-10 Int. Conference, ICSA, NIME, ELIA-Art Schools NEU/NOW Festival Vilnius, next generation festival, Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, etc. He received numerous awards and grants. He was scholarship holder of the DAAD two times and was two times artist in residence at the PACT Zollverein in Essen. Within his Residency at the Institute of Musicology in Würzburg he established the Atelier for Sound Research with Elena Ungeheuer. In spring 2014 he was composer in residence at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. His series of sound installations “Archipelago” was supported by the Art Foundation North Rhine Westphalia in 2014. Since January 2015 he is the artistic director of the OSIL-project, a 3-year artistic research project founded by the Austrian FWF, working with a group of researchers on an ontology of plastic sound phenomena in computer music and sound art with advanced sound projection techniques.

Icosahedral Speaker – History

The IEM icosahedral loudspeaker emits bundles of sounds in freely adjustable spatial directions. This bundling of sound was originally intended to improve quality of acoustic measurements. Acoustic holophony can be used to replicate natural sound generators or the paths of sound reflection recreated. The notion of applying sound sources with adjustable acoustic radiation in electroacoustic music was introduced in Paris in the late 1980s by a research group at the IRCAM. For this renowned concept study they built “La Timée”, a cube-shaped loudspeaker with six separately playable channels for the production of loosely bundled, freely controllable sound radiation directions. In 2006, the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (IEM) began an in-depth investigation into the subject from a technical standpoint. The result was a twenty-channel icosahedral loudspeaker system. Thanks to its separately controlled loudspeakers, it achieves sound beams that are three times narrower than earlier prototypes, in line with the acoustic requirement of providing an acoustically correct and powerful reproduction of musical instruments in their lower registers together with their 360° transmission range. The qualitative acoustic criteria for the use of the icosahedral loudspeaker as a musical instrument and composition tool were first developed during the exploratory work by Franz Zotter and Gerriet K. Sharma for the electroacoustic compositions grrawe (2010) and firniss (2012). As part of this collaboration, the icosahedral loudspeaker has been tested since 2009 following the requirements of an artistic work under development. The results of these “inquiries” were in turn integrated into both the development of the composition and the development of the loudspeaker/instrument. On the one hand, the device’s properties were investigated with regard to the spatialization, graduation and direction of sounds and how these could be applied in an electroacoustic space-sound composition; at the same time, the instrument’s acoustic potential and operational stability were progressively refined. In particular, the application of the beamforming algorithm developed by Franz Zotter allows strongly focused sound beams to be projected onto floors, ceilings and walls, so that sounds from the source object itself (such as in the case of a violin or most radio sets) become attenuated and rather sounds from the acoustic reflection become audible. These “beams” are not only freely adjustable in terms of their radiation angle, also different ones can be blended, or their beam width can be increased. In this way, the sound sources on the reflecting surfaces can be moved around, or collapse into the ICO. Currently there exist only few comparable systems in the world (120 channel system at CNMAT, Berkeley, a 12 channel system at ITA, RWTH-Aachen, Germany, a 12 channel system at the Acoustics Lab, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, cubical 6 channel systems at IRCAM, France, hemi-dodecahedral 6 channel systems at the Princeton and Stanford Laptop orchestras, and experimental systems of the works of Curtis Bahn, Perry Cook, and Dan Trueman. Those other systems in the world using spherical beamforming, however, are primarily used for measurement purposes except for the high-frequency system at CNMAT.

grrawe

For a couple of years only one inhabitant resided there, and also he was only rarely at home.

The composition tries to investigate the sculptural presence of 3D sound objects using primarily the IEM icosahedral loudspeaker. How can we compose and reproduce the “musical counterpart” in space? How can we help the plastic sound object to emerge? The IEM icosahedral loudspeaker radiates sounds into space in directions freely adjustable all around. Hereby, it simultaneously aims at improving the quality of technical realizations of both acoustic measurements and the holophonic reproduction of natural sound sources. Progress in the development of its “high-fidelity” required for the use of the icosahedral loudspeaker as a technical and musical instrument was initiated when Gerriet K. Sharma joined a collaboration on his piece “grrawe” with Franz Zotter. During this collaboration, the development of the icosahedral loudspeaker was challenged by the requirements of the artistic work, which was also in progress, and could be tested accordingly. The results of these “inquiries”, in turn, could be considered in the development of the composition as well as the loudspeaker.

grafik unten

No visual mean can fully show or express what we experience while we are listening to spatial sound compositions as the spatial is a parameter that ads a plastic component to the auditive experience that is mostly different to the text- or picture world. Although there have been many attempts to visualize spatial compositions these attempts can only assist for documentation or understanding structural aspects but cannot “picture” the emergences of the 3D auditory object. A triangular movement of a virtual source on a screen might be something like a triangular shape in the studio space, as long as one uses a simple click, burst or white noise sounds. But anything sounding beyond this basic signals has almost nothing to do with the visual idea, shape or architectural believe. The plastic sound object exists only in the ear. It is by all means an alternative “world proposal”. To underline this well known but often “overlooked” situation and to better understand the differences, grafik unten asks, if we can rewire this thought and compose spatial music that guides the ear in space (and time) as if we are “looking”. So what might be “seeing with the ears”?  For instance what is an auditory gaze, glance, or staring?  And what is with the Ohrenblick?

>mirage< 1 (first performance)

Is it there – are we here > together?

What is presence in the artificial electroacoustic space?

Can we share this experience?

This is piece 1 of a new series of works for the IEM icosahedral loudspeaker. Within the process of this artistic research project, very basic space-sound miniatures have been composed for the ICO. These at first consisted of easy to perceive movement patterns (e.g. cyclic motion) and sounds (e.g. sinus pulse, clicks, constant noise) that are clearly perceptible in space, and easy to describe verbally. These models have been tested with different listeners in different locations and where subject for further description and analysis to resume in a kind of spelling book. At the next stage, more complex space-sound pieces (etudes) have been composed that built upon the analysis results of the concerted research approach of the miniature studies. This occurs e.g. through the use of several different movement models, sounds and timbres, movement speeds and radiation angles. The newly composed etudes went through the same of listening, description and analysis. During the last phase the experiences of the previous stages in turn systematically flew into the sculpturing practice and the final piece: >mirage< 1.

The overall idea of this artistic research project is not to chart a collection of experimental practices. The investigations shall result in an aesthetic practice that composes space, using space as a plastic sonic material, aiming to find a poetic approach in contemporary media art to use complex environments for creating self evident and unique experiences that make a strong difference to ordinary setups like in cinema, television or home 5.1. and invite the listener to share an extended ontology of sonic spatial arts.

grrawe, grafik unten & >mirage< 1 as a question

The compositions raise the question of the self-localisation of individuals in their (sonic) environment or world. It is a continuous play with the perception of movement, distance and perspective. Where is the composer, where is the listener? Who is the composer and when does “world” come into being respectively when does it withdraw itself from the composer and or the listener?

Can we look forward to finding an answer?

Gerriet K. Sharma will give a lecture on the topic Composing with plastic sound phenomena in sonic arts on Thursday, 7^th of May, at 6pm.

www.gksh.net

fusNota presents

07.05/19.30h/ fusNota presents:  Music Academy in Zagreb and Musikhochschule Stuttgart

student´s concert @ &TD semicircular hall  (50′)

This year again, the Musicologists‘ Club fusNota presents recent pieces by fellow composers, students at the Music Academy in Zagreb. They are joined by the student ensemble Col Legno and few students of the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst from Stuttgart who will help performing and promoting music by the younger generation of composers.

Programme:

Sara Glojnarić: Shir (2014)

Antonia Dunjko (soprano), Tena Lebarić Rašković (alto), Luka Ortar (bass), Tomislav Kres (trumpet), Amina Belovari (horn), Barbara Čavar (trombone), Renato Palatinuš (percussion)

 „In “Shir” (a song, psalm) I used selected verses from the Psalm No. 8 (King David): „When I look at your heavens, The work of your fingers, The moon and the stars, Which you have set in place, What is man that you are mindful of him?“ The treatment of the music material creates an etheric and organic sound wall that is interrupted by the gong. On that sound(ing off) of the gong and its entire context (old civilisations) the whole piece gets its final shape. The piece was written on a comission by the Stiftskirche Stuttgart and it was first premiered in November 2014.“ (S.G.)

 

Juraj Marko Žerovnik: Sonatina for piano six hands (2015)

Maro Taslaman, Ivor Prajdić, Juraj Marko Žerovnik

 “The six-hands piano sonata was written in 2015 on the initiative of the piano teacher from an elementary school that had its students at the competition. The first movement was a result of being impressed by the Irish folklore, the second one is a bit calmer and the third one brings the story to its end, through the cascades and scales that originate from the theme.” (J.M.Ž.)

Helena Skljarov: Piano Quartet: 2nd and 3rd movement (2013.)

Jasmina Bojić (violin), Višeslav Salopek (viola), Klara Romac (cello), Josipa Bartovčak (piano)

“I composed the Piano Quartet for the entry exam at the Music Academy’s Composition Section. It is my second piece, first one where I use other instruments except piano. Each of the four movements presents a certain atmosphere of the Writings from the underground, except for the third one, that is a kind of a „lie“, an illusion of the overly „beautiful“ and pathetic, from the book.” (H.S.)

Franjo Klinar: Tico – for percussion trio (2013)

Fran Krsto Šercar, Renato Palatinuš, Gregor Hrovat

“I wrote Tico for the Zagreb Percussion Trio, who first performed it at the Marimba Week in Samobor, in 2013. I tried to create the impression of my car throughout the piece, in different ways – using melodies, themes that remind me of it and some motives that, at some points, literally imitate sounds of the car.” (F.K.)

Ivan Violić: Burleska – for string quartet (2015)

Jasmina Bojić (violin), Božena Jurišić (violin), Višeslav Salopek (viola), Klara Romac (cello)

“Burleska for string quartet was written at the beginning of this year. The word comes from the Italian word burla – joke. It is said that every joke holds half of the truth. I don’t agree with the cathegorical caracter of the claim, but I am not implying that this burlesque doesn’t have seriousness.” (I.V.)

 

Sara Glojnarić: … straight from the fingertips (2014)

Mari Øyrehagen (soprano), Marius Schötz (baritone), Sara Glojnarić (piano)

Direction: Berndt Schmitt

“Auto-censorship, superficial and thoughtless communication are the two „ills“ this piece isolates; two parallel facebook chat windows provide a kind of voyeur insight into six minutes of an everyday life of two people whose dialogue is auto-censored up to a point where the real content of the message is completely lost. The music material, written so as to fit the video, is based on a previous chat sound for the Facebook application on smartphones (f-a-c-e). Video, movement and music create three levels that are hard to follow at the same time, so the listener/viewer is forced to superficially scroll through the performance.” (S.G.)

www.muza.hr

Experimental Ensemble: Instructions 5-11

06.05 / 21.30h/ Experimental Ensemble: Instructions 5-11 (Caddy, Gladović, Imai, Jeffery, Lešaja, Livajić, Pinjušić, Sőrés) @ MM centre (60′)

Experimental Ensemble plays Instructions 5-11 (Introspective Language Music)

Introspective Language Music (ILM) is a project by Hilary Jeffery in which elements of language and music are used as navigational tools for inner exploration. Wide research is carried out and distilled into a series of concise instructions which combine text, sound and image as a means to enter into introspective states. The research results take the form of studies for solo performers, each study is considered to be an “instruction” for a specific performer to carry out. The first phase (2013-2014) was a research project funded by the Netherlands Performing Arts Fund and resulted in four new studies (Instructions 1-4) for Claron McFadden, Alessandro Bosetti, Jaap Blonk and Amelia Cuni. During his residency in Zagreb, Hilary will develop and design seven new studies (Instructions 5-11) for the musicians of this years Experimental Ensemble. On 6th of May during the daytime, each musician will perform their instruction as a solo and in the evening the seven instructions will be combined to create a new composition, performed in the MM Centre.

Third in a row, this year’s Experimental Ensemble of the Music Showroom (EAMS.008) gathers eight musicians from the international music scene who will spend 10 days in residence at the Student Centre, while working together and exploring mutual sound correlations, creating a new ensemble and new music material. Their creative energies, different or similar musical ideas and expressions are joined by the artistic leader of the ensemble, trombonist and composer Hilary Jeffery. Talented musicians and explorers who take part in the Experimental Ensemble project are: cellist Anthea Caddy (Australia/Germany), guitarist and electronic musician Miodrag Gladović (Croatia), percussionist Ryoko Imai (Japan/Netherlands), electronic musician and sound engineer Hilary Jeffery (Great Britain/Germany), soprano Marija Lešaja (Croatia), saxophone player Lovro Livajić (Croatia/Serbia), pianist Ivana Pinjušić (Croatia) and violist Zsolt Sőrés (Hungary).

Hilary Jeffery has been working as a musician since the early ’90s and describes himself as a “desert trombonist” after his journey to the Sahara in 1990, accompanied by a trombone. He believes that the sense of silent-space experienced during this desert journey is a central and sustaining influence for his music. As a musician he aims to share this experience, creating inner-space for listeners and fellow musicians to explore. Three main projects are used as vehicles for this work: LYSN (“minimal psychedelic” ensemble), Alaposaune (study of Indian classical music with Amelia Cuni) and ILM (Introspective Language Music). In 2015 Hilary launched two new projects: Inconsolable Ghost (haunted cinema productions) and Tonaliens (exploring the inner-dimensions and outer-limits of just intonation). He is based in Berlin where he plays with many groups including a new duo with Anthea Caddy, Zinc & Copper Works, Splitter Orchester and Zeitkratzer.

Anthea Caddy is a cellist and Ph.D candidate under sound theorist Douglas Kahn, and is researching the expansion of spatiality through the use of acoustic phenomena and listening techniques with specialised loudspeaker systems and acoustic instrumentation.

Miodrag Gladović is an engineer of electroacoustics, musician and a producer. A very wide artistic sensibility enabled him to take part in an array of musical projects and his work is often connected to the technological development. Together with Bojan Gagić he is a part of the Lightune.G duo, exploring and developing composing in the field of luminoacoustics.

Ryoko Imai is a Japanese percussionist based in Amsterdam. Musically intelligent and sensitive ably supported by her strong techniques. Audience is always attracted and excited by her rhythmical, feminine, powerful and danceable performance.

Soprano Marija Lešaja graduated from the Music Academy in Zagreb, continuing her studies at the University for Music and Applied Arts in Vienna. Apart from the classical repertoire, in the past few years she is engaged more in performing contemporary pieces, and EAMS.008 is the first exploratory and experimental project she will take part in.

Saxophonist Lovro Livajić is currently studying at the Art Academy in Novi Sad with Gordan Tudor and also takes part in workshops dedicated to contemporary music. He is a member of the orchestra that recorded and first performed a number of contemporary pieces by the younger generation of Serbian composers and lately he has been more active in improvised music.

Pianist Ivana Pinjušić graduated from the Music Academy in Zagreb and afterwards started working as a musical pedagogue, while also continued playing with the funk fusion band Mangora. Curiosity, openess to the new and unknown as well as interest for the new sound, these were all reasons for her joining the Experimental Ensemble, as well as a wish to question her relation to sound that was based on conventional education, through collaboration and exchange with musicians of different experiences.

Zsolt Sőrés (viola, electronics) is improvised/electroacoustic and noise musician, sound artist, editor and curator. Very active on international contemporary music scene, Sőrés collaborated with Jean-Hervé Péron (from the legendary krautrock band ”Faust”), Christian Skjødt, Franz Hautzinger, Julo Fujak, Isabelle Duthoit, Adam Bohman, Oli Mayne, Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Richard Barrett, Milana Zarić, Christian Kobi, etc. His field of interest and activity – beside music – includes the borderline and the margin of different art forms, too.

linguisticmusic.com

hiljef.com

www.antheacaddy.com

Open Space: Pocket full of little sounds

07.05. / 17h/ Open Space: Pocket full of little sounds (Miodrag Gladović aka Buco Baajka)@ French Pavilion (20′)

The specific acoustics of the French Pavilion, in the classical sense, is very limiting, unfitted for placing any music programme that requires “normal” concert venue. But, precisely because of its specific qualities, it is very inspiring, interesting and even perfect for the site-specific art projects that take the Pavilion’s acoustics as a starting point of their artwork. Continuing the artistic acoustic experiments from December 2014 as a part of Fair of Culture, the Showroom will open the French Pavilion’s doors in the afternoons for an acoustic exploring through shorter improvisations by the guitarist and electronic musician Miodrag Gladović and the Vocal Ensemble Antiphonus.

Miodrag Gladović is an engineer in electroacoustics, a musician and a producer. His wide artistic sensibility enables him to be successfully active in an array of music projects and his work is often connected to technological development. Together with Bojan Gagić, he is active as a part of the Lightune.G, artistic duo that works in the field of luminoacoustic composition. At the first Showroom of Contemporary Sound, he presented his project Packmess GP and this year he will perform as Buco Baajka, playing with micro sounds that originate in his pockets. Thanks to his exceptional engineering knowledge and his punk approach, Buco Baajka will doubtless present an innovative, interesting and fun impro performance, exploring the possibilities of musical expression and sound manipulation through the omnipresent mobile devices. With the assistance of the French Pavilion acoustics, Gladović creates an unconventional sound image of the space.

avoq

06.05. / 23.59 sati avoq @ &TD semicircular hall  (40′)

avoq is an audiovisual project of the two authors-performers: multi-instrumentalist Ivan Kovačić Kova and the visual artist Ivan Biondić Mirza. Using the saxophone, electric guitar, effects and synthesisers, Kova builds his material in an organic way, creating at first individual layers, afterwards superpositioning them and combining. From the original minimalist material, he gradually builds up a more complex structure, that is texture, and the musical result of Kova’s improvisational work is characterized by a large dinamic range, repetitive character, intensity and an extraordinary performing energy. Leaving out the themes and harmonies, Kova works more with colours in his recent performances, creating ambiental fields that he sometimes develops all the way until extreme noise. Mirza’s visual material is an inspirational element for Kova, from which he builds up on towards improvisation, at the same time it is a physical element that detaches and „hides“ him from the audience. avoq as in avoqousmatic.