Facial Points and Genres
FOCAL POINTS OF MONTH OF CONTEMPORAY MUSIC
The Month of Contemporary Music is a collaborative project: it is the ensembles, festivals and artists who shape the umbrella festival’s programme with their own events. As a result, there is not a pre-defined motto, but rather a variety of themes and forms of music-making and composing that run through the programme as common threads:
CREATING TOGETHER – FROM CO-COMPOSITION TO IMPROVISATION
Many musicians today move freely between genres such as contemporary music, improvisation and electronic music. The traditional boundary between composer and performer is often deliberately dissolved, with the diversity of collaborative creation processes taking centre stage. At the opening of the Month of Contemporary Music on 31 August at the Kühlhaus, the Sonar Quartet and the Trio Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard and guests will perform their own compositions. The Reanimation Orchestra, which will perform at ausland on 20 September, is always looking for new ways in which its musicians can fulfil their changing roles in the group with openness, artistic integrity and authenticity. On 21 September, Neo Hülcker and MAM.manufaktur für aktuelle musik will present "something new" - a joint composition from the MAM test kitchen, in which musicians from the ensemble will come together with guests to develop experimental formats.
JOIN IN – OFFERS NOT ONLY FOR CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE
With its joy of experimentation and curiosity about tomorrow, contemporary music opens up playing fields for participation and exploration in every nook and cranny. At the Festival for Self-Made Music on 1 September, open workshops welcome people of all ages to spend a day tinkering, working, soldering and, of course, making music. In a workshop with Rimini Protokoll, KlangKunstBühne students have developed the interactive installation "24 Timelines Performing", whose soundtracks can be played by the audience on 15 September in the UdK rehearsal hall. In the Schrumpf! LAB, children aged five to eight can get to know their voices (anew) and discover unusual instruments together with their accompanying adults, Maulwerker Christian Kesten and music teacher Aida Shahidi (29 Sept., exploratorium berlin).
ABITATS – URBAN WORLDS & SOUND ECOLOGY
Many musicians are increasingly concerned with our relationship to the environment and the spaces we inhabit and shape in our everyday lives. The climate crisis and the responsibility for our living spaces are deeply inscribed in today's music production, which is also reflected in the Month‘s programme: The installations "The Whalesong Project" by Alexander Johannes (5-6 Sept., Berliner Dom) and "h2XD" by Martin Supper (6-15 Sept., Haus20) examine the sonority of architectural monuments. "Paretzer Field Music" invites you to picnic concerts in Havelland: Marina Cyrino, Sabine Vogel and Tony Buck will be playing there on 8 September. The fifth edition of "ANIMA MUNDI" opens on 12 September, with musicians from Germany, Ireland and Poland exploring various environmental relationships, changes to the landscape and questions of sustainability.
MUSIC OF TOMORROW – TECHNOLOGY & ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
New technologies, and artificial intelligence in particular, are also occupying new music. In the interactive online concert "Steig durch das Tamtam" (10-17 Sep.), the Schwelbrandorchester takes its audience into the depths of a highly complex hybrid world of sound, animation, live music, electronics and video. "Woven All of Dream and Error" is an exhibition (11.-15.Sep.) by Kata Kovács and Tom O'Doherty that uses films, images and sound to examine the overlapping of two areas of technological history: locations of disused railway lines and the emergence of artificial intelligence. In "Roller Coaster Lore" (18 Sep., KM28), AI has already taken over the Bundestag: Performers Luke Nickel and Weston Olencki take us on a simulated roller coaster ride to Spreepark, a collectively run anarchist theme park. For "AIODE Apocalypse", the musicians of the Marc Sinan Company, Sara Glojnarić and Nicola Hein have entered into a musical dialogue with artificial intelligence. On 21 and 22 September, we will hear what happens when humans and AI create art together on the grounds of HTW Berlin.
SOUND RESEARCH – PLAY DIFFERENTLY & HEAR ANEW
Contemporary music has always been a laboratory for the expansion of playing techniques, instrument catalogues and listening approaches. The Month of Contemporary Music explores new possibilities of traditional instruments, for example in the concert "Legal Downloads" with trumpeter Nathan Plante (10 Sep., BKA) or on 13 Sep. in silent green with drummer Julian Sartorius and electronic virtuoso Matthew Herbert. At the same time, in the concert series "Entangled Sounds" with Dinah Bird and Ioana Vreme Moser, objects and bodies will be examined for their potential to complement traditional instruments (6 Sept., KM28). The duo Tolimieri-Wong want to expose the "sound itself" by erasing syntactical structures in their music as radically as possible (8. Sep., Morphine Raum). In the "Rumpeln" concert series, Stefan Roigk takes noise as the starting point for his research and Mizuki Ishikawa shifts listening from the sound source to the manipulation of space as an acoustic environment (28 Sep., Studio 764).
RESISTING – ACTIVISM & CRITICAL REFLECTION
The question of how structural injustice and social ills can be countered is addressed in a variety of ways at the events this month. With contemporary music and poetry, the Trickster Orchestra's production "Unsettling Sounds" reflects female experiences in Iran and Afghanistan in the fight against oppression and in the search for agency (14. Sep., ACUD Theatre). Felix Stachelhaus, the ensemble LUX:NM, singer Lisa Florentine Schmalz and the Richardchor Neukölln explore the promise of advancement and the self-optimisation mania of the affluent society in the late capitalist advisory cantata "Besser werden" for success fanatics and a depressive choir (20.Sep., BallhausOst). The performative audio piece "Procession of Slings" traces German colonialism in urban space (21-22 Sep., Eckernförder Platz). In the lecture performance accompanying the installation "Errant Earplugs", you can join artist Suvani Suri on a search for overheard traces from a colonial archive on the languages and dialects of the Indian subcontinent (13 Sep., Haunt / Frontviews).
FESTIVALS WITHIN A FESTIVAL
As every year, several festivals take place during the Month of Contemporary Music. Musikfest Berlin, organised by the Berliner Festspiele and the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker, starts on September 1 and continues through 18. From 7 to 29 September, the sound art biennial DYSTOPIA will focus on artists from the Indian subcontinent. In 22 audiovisual installations, performances and interventions in public space, this year's programme will focus on the search for utopias and ways out of dystopian times. And last but not least is the music festival for solo improvisation "Berlin Solo Impro", which brings together artists from the Berlin scene and the international scene from 3 to 5 September.
GENRES OF THE MONTH OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
SOUND ART
With the Dystopia sound art biennial from 7 to 29 September and the festival "Extended Spaces - Resonant Bodies: Alvin Lucier" by singuhr projekte from 11 to 22 September, a major focus of the Month of Contemporay Music this year is on sound art. An installation by Elo Masing offers a sonic reaction to the works of painter and performance artist Dolanbay in the exhibition "Negating Blank II", which runs from 6 to 29 September in the Meinblau project space. From 6 to 28 September, the joint exhibition "Beben" by Harriet Groß and Stefan Roigk at Axel Obiger uses graphic and acoustic means to shake up the supposed stability of valid systems of order. The sonic world of architectural monuments can be explored in the installation "The Whale Song Project" by Alexander Johannes between 9 and 11 September in the Berlin Cathedral. Edition Juliane Klein is also hosting an exhibition of sound and video installations to mark its 25th anniversary with "Fünfgezackt in die Hand" from 29 September to 12 October at KUNSTPUNKT BERLIN.
ECHTZEITMUSIK AND IMPROVISATION
Constantly on the move and growing for years, the Echtzeitmusik and free improvisation scene is one of the most exciting in the city. From the intimate solo format, which is the focus of the "Berlin Solo Impro" festival from 3 to 5 September at the Acker Stadt Palast, to ensembles such as the Reanimation Orchestra, which will be performing at ausland on 20 September, its musicians come together in fixed or spontaneous formations. There are entire venues are dedicated to her, such as the exploratorium berlin, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and is opening its doors for events on 3, 19 and 29 September at events fot the Month of Contemporary Music. There are also concert series also focussing on it, including Improvised and Experimental at the Hošek Contemporary Gallery (4, 11, 18 and 25 Sep.) and Sentimental Punk at the Kotti Shop (7 Sep.), to name but a few.
COMPOSED MUSIC
Concerts with composed music will not be neglected this month either: Ensemble Adapter is dedicating the concert "Beginner's mind" to composer Walter Zimmermann on the occasion of his 75th birthday presenting a concert of selected works on 1 September as part of an exhibition of Zimmermann's scores, among others, at Galerie Max Hetzler. As part of the music festival, the ensembles Exaudi and Phace will perform two works by Isabel Mundry at the Berlin Philharmonie on 12 September. And on 12 September, the Zafraan Ensemble will take a closer look at Franz Kafka with settings of his texts by Ruth Zechlin.
MUSIC THEATER & PERFORMANCE
Beyond the grand gesture of opera, a diverse music theatre and performance scene has evolved in independent spaces in Berlin, which naturally draws on all areas of art. The "Pracinha" series at Acker Stadt Palast combines Echtzeitmusik with clowns, artists, dancers and other guests to create an open-ended event - next time on 1 September. From 3 to 6 September at CABUWAZI Tempelhof, the company glanz&krawall will be rehearsing the rebellion against beautiful death, the same old femme fatale attributions and the narrowness of a male-dominated (art) world with "Lulu: Revanche im Zirkuszelt". On 21 and 22 September, the performative audio piece "Procession of Slings" takes you out of the concert hall and into a forest in Wedding, following in the footsteps of German colonialism in East Asia. On 18 September, you can look over the shoulders of the next generation of the scene at the music theatre workshop in the UdK rehearsal hall.
Join us in looking forward to the immense, even overwhelming, but in any case exhilarating diversity of the programme of the Month of Contemporary Music Berlin. The artistic and thematic diversity illustrates the innovative power and reflectiveness of highly professional and specialised musicians in an independent scene that is unique in the world.
The full programme is available at www.field-notes.berlin/mdzm
