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Nothing breaking at Roulette

Concert

On Feb. 11th, New York based avant garde musicians Laura Cocks, Zach Layton, Brian Chase, Samantha Sea Sea and MV Carbon perform illuminating works at Roulette NYC by six composers associated with contemporary classical music in Denmark and New York City. Innovative compositional approaches and extended techniques converge in an event that incorporates spatial elements, sculptural sound objects, audience engagement, and collaborative interpretation.

Samantha Sea Sea performs NOTHING BREAKING THE LOSING (2016) alongside works by MV Carbon, Mads Emil Dreyer, Bára Gísladóttir, Jexper Holmen and Ylva Lund Bergner.

Organized by MV Carbon and Lars Lundehave. Sponsored by Nordic Culture Fund and presented by Roulette. This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
February 2nd

Funding for arts and culture

Interview

Reliable and sufficient funding is crucial to a vibrant and diverse cultural scene as well as to the development of new forms and ideas. However due to rising expenditure and budget cuts, the cultural sector is facing yet again major challenges in many places. We talk to experts from the Nordic countries and Germany about how to meet these challenges: How is the cultural sector doing in the North and what are local funding opportunities? What does it take to maintain cultural programs? How can cultural inclusion be guaranteed for everyone? What kind of approaches exist in the Nordics and in Germany? And what role do arts and culture play for our society, especially in unstable times like these?

Panelists:
Guðný Guðmundsdóttir, Icelandic curator and gallerist
Prof. Dr. Julius Heinicke, Professor of Cultural Policy and chairholder of the UNESCO Chair „Cultural Policy for the Arts in Development“ at the University of Hildesheim, Germany
Juliana Hodkinson, British composer, chair of the Danish Composers' Union as well as deputy chair of Initiative Neue Musik Berlin
Juhana Lassila, Deputy CEO of The Finnish Cultural Foundation
Ståle Stenslie, Head of Research and Development at Kulturtanken – Den kulturelle skolesekken, Norway
Pratik Vithlani, Operations developer at Riksteatern, Sweden

Moderator:
Jenni Zylka, Journalist, film and music critic, writer

Program:
6 pm_Arrival and registration (possibility to buy drinks at the Kaffebar until 6:30 pm)
6:30 pm_Welcome by Sweden‘s Cultural Counselor in Germany Anneli Strömqvist
6:40 pm_Panel discussion
8 pm_Reception
Free admission / The event will be held in English

Event info
January 23rd

Lightness

On 30th Jan, Ensemble Eklekto performs LIGHTNESS (2015) at SONIC MATTER festival, Zurich, alongside works by Mio Chareteau, Alexandre Babel, Salômé Guillemin-Poeuf and Isandro Ojeda-Garcia

LIGHTNESS was originally commissioned and first performed in Zurich by Speak Percussion, so this is a kind of 10-year anniversary for the piece coming back to Zurich, after having been performed by many percussion ensembles around the world.

Event info
January 23rd

Nothing breaking the losing

Concert

Wien Modern presents NOTHING BREAKNIG THE LOSING (2016) with Ensemble Phace's Roland Schueler and Juliana Hodkinson performing on 25th November at Wiener Konzerthaus.

This piece was the first in an ongoing series in which the audience is assigned a collective responsibility for realising the work. The viola at the centre of NOTHING BREAKING THE LOSING has threads attached, which the musician pulls on, creating vibration and returning sound to the instrument. Some audience members hold threads strung across the performance area with .small dangling objects that float above a small collection of porcelain and glassware assembled on the floor. A text is recited; it is a plea to connect tiny human actions with larger social and complex interpersonal contexts that are rooted in gender, race, national sentiments, class and family relationships.
So far, the series contains a number of versions – Nothing Breaking the Losing (2016), Nothing Breaking/Occasion (2018), Nothing Breaking/Necessary Places (2022), Nothing Breaking/No Care (2022), Nothing Breaking / Rolling Silence (2024) - all of which work with these same social mechanics, with differences in instrumentation, degree of amplification, audience interaction, and installation of threads and objects.

NOTHING BREAKING THE LOSING is published by Edition S. The score can be viewed here

Photo: Ina Ciumakova

More info on the concert at Wien Modern here
November 17th

Here's your milk

New work

On Wednesday 11th Nov, Umo Duo gives the first performance of HERE'S YOUR MILK (2024) at raum236, Zürich.

HERE'S YOUR MILK continues a series – following JOUNCE (2016), THRESH (2018) and BEAT (2020) - that explores tapping, hitting and shaking sounds across various strings, dowels, materials, bows and instruments. It also looks back to RHODA'S SONG and HARRIET'S SONG (2001), which in turn are inspired by Jane Bowles’ puppet play A Quarreling Pair, from 1945.

The thematics of a sister relationship from Jane Bowles’ play resurfaced in my response to the Öhman sisters’ commission. Where, in HARRIET's SONG, I took a more gentle and sentimental angle on sisterhood, I chose in HERE'S YOUR MILK, to go with the strength. The players sit back to back - the percussionist (Erika) with a drum kit, and the cellist (Karolina) playing with two bows. They each have a hi-hat, kick drum and triangles in common, and their metrics and rhythms are locked into one another. Sharing close quarters is not only a recipe for spatial claustrophobia, but also an opportunity for intensely meaningful contact? The unconventional yet completely ordinary rigidity of Jane Bowles’ take on sisterhood is, in this case, a strong ground for tight musical coordination and sonic mirroring.

HERE'S YOUR MILK was commissioned by Karolina and Erika Öhman – Ume Duo – with the kind support of KodaKultur and the Danish Arts Council, Statens Kunstfond
November 11th

On the line

New work

As part of singuhr's festival Extended spaces - Resonant Bodies: Alvin Lucier, the new large-scale participatory work On the line (2024) is performed at Radialsystem, Berlin, on 21st Sept 2024 by Ensemble KNM.

ON THE LINE connects musicians and listeners at a series of junctures, in temporary formations in which instrument, action, line, word and listening hold potential for negotiation.
The audience is involved in a relational sense of ensemble, where there is perhaps some value in keeping the tension, or even drawing it out – through holding, sustaining, talking, playing, taking part and, not least, listening. A central moment in the work is a modified reenactment of Lucier’s Love Songs – a piece that Ensemble KNM worked on directly with Lucier in Berlin. The original Lucier piece’s basic grammar of transfering resonance from one string instrument to another, connected through space by a long metal wire – is here evolved into a multi-player situation. The reenactment is embedded within two contrasting relational textures that both require the participation of some of the audience in order to establish themselves.

The composition of ON THE LINE is supported by Statens Kunstfond and KodaKultur.

More info on the festival and concert
September 17th

Thresh for kids parcours

On Sunday 15th Sept, Dutch ensemble Nemø repeats their kids' parcours, where 6-9 year olds can experience THRESH (2018) alongside works by Elena Rykova, Carola Bauckholt, Eugene Ughetti and Rolf Wallin. THRESH was originally commissioned for Speak Percussion by Darmstädter Ferienkurse, and is a trio for horizontal strings, dowel and fluorescent light.

The event is part of November Music's pre-programme and takes place at Theater aan de Parade, Hertogenbosch

Concert info
September 14th

کاربر ناشناس

Concert

On Saturday 14th Sept, Ensemble KNM premieres a new work by Juliana Hodkinson and film duo Realillusion - Atefeh Kheirabadi and Mehrad Sepahnia - at Berlin's Radialsystem, as part of their invitation to several composes and sound artists to respond to the legacy of Nina Simone's song 'Four Women'.

The collaborative work کاربر ناشناس (in Farsi, ‘unknown user’) - refers to the nationwide protests that broke out in Iran in 2022. The work conveys the protests and their consequences, documented and shared with various degrees of anonymity in social networks by users who often themselves stood at considerable risk by recording and sharing footage. Those unknown users' short videos are collated, in this work, around four thematic perspectives of some of the women who have witnessed, driven and participated in the protests.

کاربر ناشناس is commissioned and premiered by Ensemble KNM Berlin and is written for bass flute, contrabass clarinet, cello and film with soundtrack.

The other composers responding to Simone's 'Four Women' in the same concert are Lin Fang-Yi, Cao Thanh Lan and Ana María Rodríguez.

More info about the concert

September 11th

Symfonien på Skamlingsbank

Concert

Based on conversations with 300 local residents from Vejle, Kolding and Haderslev, ensemble Lydenskab, writer Ursula Andkjær Olsen and composer Juliana Hodkinson have put together an outdoor performance that will stage on Saturday 22nd June at Skamlingsbank - site of Danish national political speeches.

In SYMFONIEN PÅ SKAMLINGSBANK the citizens speak back to the politicians - about nature, healthcare, waste disposal and housing projects. The performance is framed by an introductory 2km walk through the landscape, and finishes with communal dining.

More info and booking here (walk and concert are free, dinner has a charge)
June 18th

Nothing breaking / rolling silence

New work

Next month, ensemble megaphon gives the first performance of
NOTHING BREAKING / ROLLING SILENCE (2024) as part of their new project
'rolling silence - a concert for everyone ... who needs water'
including also works by Nina Dragičević, Georg Friedrich Händel, DJ pacifique
Eliane Radigue, Kirsten Reese, Georg Phillip Teleman and Manos Tsangaris.

Performances Sunday 2nd and Sat 8th June at 7:30pm, Heiligkreuzkirche Hannover - pay what you can
More info here
May 9th